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Last week, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau issued a Notice of Apparent Liability proposing an $8000 fine on a Los Angeles radio broadcaster that did not award a contest prize until over a year after the contest rules called for the prize to be delivered.  The contest rules called for the prize to be awarded within 30 days of a winner sending all required paperwork to the station.  As payments were made over a year after the end of the 30-day period provided by the contest rules, the Bureau concluded that the station had violated Section 73.1216 of the FCC rules which requires, among other contest rules, that a contest be conducted “fairly and substantially as represented to the public.”  The Bureau’s Notice cites to FCC precedent indicating that “timely fulfillment of the prize” is a material term in the contest rules which, when violated, represents a violation of the FCC rule.

The prize money that was awarded late was only $396, so some might think that a proposed fine of $8000 is excessive, though the Bureau indicates in a footnote that there were 98 prize winners in the same contest that did not timely receive their prizes.  The Bureau itself noted that the “base forfeiture” for a violation of the contest rules set out in the FCC’s schedule of fines is $4000.  But the proposed fine was adjusted upward in this case because the FCC perceived that, for a large company such as the licensee of this station, a $4000 fine might simply be seen as a cost of doing business, and not act as a sufficient deterrent against future bad conduct.  The FCC even noted that it had the power to fine the station for each day that the contest award was not made, which could have resulted in a fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars.Continue Reading FCC Proposes $8000 Fine for Failure to Award $396 Prize Within Time Period Set Out in the Contest Rules

  • The FCC adopted a decision resolving the FCC’s long-pending proceeding on whether to authorize FM “zonecasting” or “geo-targeting,” permitting FM
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For the first time since October, we can say that the federal government is funded for the rest of the fiscal year (through the end of September) so we do not expect to have to report on any threats of a government shutdown for many months. With that worry off our plate, we can look at the dates that broadcasters do need to pay attention to in the month of April.

First, we’ll look at the most significant routine filing deadlines coming up in April.  April 1 is the deadline for radio and television station employment units in Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas with five or more full-time employees to upload their Annual EEO Public File Report to their stations’ online public inspection files.  A station employment unit is a station or cluster of commonly controlled stations serving the same general geographic area having at least one common employee.  For employment units with five or more full-time employees, the annual report covers hiring and employment outreach activities for the prior year.  A link to the uploaded report must also be included on the home page of each station’s website, if the station has a website.  Be timely getting these reports into your public file, as even a single late report can lead to FCC fines (see our article here about a recent $26,000 fine for a single late EEO report).

The filing of the Annual EEO Public File Reports for radio station employment units in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee with eleven or more full-time employees triggers a Mid-Term EEO Review, where the FCC will analyze the last two Annual Reports for compliance with FCC requirements.  There is no form to file to initiate this review but, when radio stations located in those states with five or more full-time employees are required to upload to their public file their annual EEO Public File Report, they must also indicate in the online public file whether their employment unit has eleven or more full-time employees, using a checkbox now included in the public file’s EEO folder.  This allows the FCC to determine which station groups need a Mid-Term Review.  See our articles here and here on Mid-Term EEO Review reporting requirements for radio stations.Continue Reading April Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – EEO Reports, Quarterly Issues/Programs Lists, LUC Windows, Rulemaking Comments, and More

  • Congress passed a $1.2 trillion spending bill to keep the federal government funded through the end of this fiscal year on September 30 – thereby narrowly averting a government shutdown that would have begun as of midnight on Saturday, March 23.
  • The FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability proposing to fine Nexstar Media Group,
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  • Congress passed, and the President signed, a continuing resolution to extend funding for the Federal government, including the FCC, averting
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While there are a number of regulatory deadlines scheduled for broadcasters in the month of March, there is also the potential for some of those to shift if we have a federal government shutdown.  As of the date of the publication of this article, we do not know if a federal government shutdown will occur this month, with the FCC and FTC currently being funded only through March 8.  As we recently discussed here, the FCC and other government agencies may have to cease all but critical functions if they do not have any residual funds to continue operations during a shutdown.  Therefore, if Congress fails to extend funding of the FCC and other government agencies past March 8, many of the regulatory deadlines discussed below will likely be postponed. If there is a shutdown, and any of the deadlines below apply to you, be sure to research how the shutdown affects your operations.

There are certain technical deadlines likely not affected by any shutdown.  Those include the requirement that, by March 11, broadcasters using Sage EAS equipment implement the requirement that, when a station receives an over-the-air EAS alert, it must wait at least 10 seconds to determine if a CAP alert has been sent through the IPAWS system and, if it has, the station should rebroadcast that internet-delivered CAP alert rather than the one received over the air.  We wrote more about that requirement on our Broadcast Law Blog, here. For stations using other EAS equipment, the deadline was December 12, 2023 to implement this requirement but as Sage was delayed in pushing out its equipment update, users of that equipment were given until March 11 to comply with this requirement. Continue Reading March Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Sage EAS Compliance Deadline, Effective Dates of New FCC Rules, Comment Deadlines, Daylight Savings Time, Political Windows, and More