Last week, NPR ran a story with the provocative headline – “The Truth In Political Advertising – You’re Allowed to Lie.” The story talked about how the FCC does not regulate candidate advertising to decide the truth of political ads, and then quoted a former FCC Chair to say that candidates can
FCC Releases First EEO Audit of 2022 – Notices Sent to Over 250 Radio and TV Stations
The FCC yesterday released another of its regular EEO audit notices (available here), this time targeting over 250 radio and TV stations. Those stations, and the station employment units (commonly owned stations serving the same area) with which they are associated, must provide to the FCC (by posting the information in their online public inspection file) their last two year’s EEO Annual Public File reports, as well as backing data to show that the station in fact did everything that was required under the FCC rules.
Audited stations must provide copies of notices sent to employment outreach sources about each full-time vacancy at the stations as well as documentation of the supplemental efforts that all station employment units with 5 or more full-time employees are required to perform (whether or not they had job openings in any year). These non-vacancy specific outreach efforts are designed to educate the community about broadcast employment positions and to train employees for more senior roles in broadcasting. Stations must also provide, in response to the audit, information about how they self-assessed the performance of their EEO program. Stations that are listed in the audit notice have until May 5, 2022 to upload this information to their online public file.
Continue Reading FCC Releases First EEO Audit of 2022 – Notices Sent to Over 250 Radio and TV Stations
This Week in Regulation for Broadcasters: March 12, 2022 to March 18, 2022
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, and a look ahead at an important deadline next week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
- New FCC sponsorship identification rules that impose obligations on almost
New Rules on the Identification of Foreign Government-Provided Programs Affects All Broadcasters – Now in Effect
The FCC this week announced that broadcasters must now comply with new rules designed to identify when programming is run on U.S. stations that was provided by a foreign governmental entity pursuant to a lease of airtime. While this seems like a narrow purpose, the new rules will impose a burden on broadcasters. Because of First Amendment considerations, the FCC cannot totally prohibit the broadcast of such programming, but it adopted this rule to ensure that audiences are informed about programming backed by a foreign government. The NAB and other groups have appealed the FCC’s rules, and that appeal is pending. The court also denied a request to delay the requirements of the new rules from going into effect. Thus, broadcasters must begin to comply with the rules now.
The FCC’s rules require broadcasters to make a very specific sponsorship identification disclosure in programming aired under an agreement for the lease of airtime if that programming has been supplied by a “foreign governmental entity” (defined in the rule), or if anyone involved in the production or distribution of that programming aired pursuant to the lease agreement (or a sub-lease) qualifies as a foreign governmental entity. A foreign government entity is defined by the FCC rule (Section 73.1212(j)) to “include governments of foreign countries, foreign political parties, agents of foreign principals, and United States-based foreign media outlets.” The rule goes on to give other specific definitions of these terms.
Continue Reading New Rules on the Identification of Foreign Government-Provided Programs Affects All Broadcasters – Now in Effect
This Week in Regulation for Broadcasters: March 5, 2022 to March 11, 2022
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, and a look ahead to events of importance next week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
- The Media Bureau this week released the first of what
$250,000 Fine and Surrender of 100 LPTV Authorizations Shows FCC Insistence on Permanent Construction of Stations Authorized by Construction Permits – “Serial Moves” Can Be Abuse of Process
In a Consent Decree released earlier this week, the FCC showed how serious it is about requiring that when a broadcaster applies for and receives authority to construct a new station or a modification of an existing station, it really plans to construct the station and operate on a permanent basis. In this case, a company called Lowcountry Media agreed to pay $250,000 to the government and surrender FCC authorizations for about 100 LPTV stations to resolve allegations that it had abused FCC processes by filing for and receiving construction permits for changes in at least 30 of its stations without a serious intent to permanently construct and operate each station to serve the public in the area authorized by the permits. After Lowcountry agreed to these penalties, the FCC allowed the sale of numerous other Lowcountry stations, and gave Lowcountry additional time to construct other new stations whose authorizations it retained.
The FCC explained its concerns leading to the penalties in the following language:
While some Stations were constructed with temporary facilities because of Lowcountry’s alleged difficulty obtaining permanent equipment as a result of supply chain issues….. at least 30 of Lowcountry’s stations were constructed with temporary facilities and only operated for a limited duration (a matter of days) with no apparent intention to provide permanent programming to viewers.
Lowcountry’s business plan apparently was to utilize the Commission’s minor modification application process to relocate the facilities distances greater than 30 miles, without contour overlap, and never permanently operate them at the location specified in the construction permits it acquired from prior licensees and in some cases applied for itself. The Bureau believes that Lowcountry’s actions and filings amounted to an abuse of the Commission’s licensing processes…..
In the LPTV service, the holder of a license or permit for a station can file a “minor change” application at any time. A minor change is a change in the power or location of a station where some portion of the station’s existing service area overlaps with the area proposed to be served in the newly proposed facilities. However, in no event can a minor change move a station more than 30 miles. A major change is one does not fit within the definitions of a minor change. Major changes can only be filed only when the FCC opens a major change window – which rarely happens (and is usually accompanied by the opportunity to file for new stations – as a major change in an existing facility would preclude the opportunity for someone else to file for a new station). The FCC is concerned about a broadcaster using multiple “hops” of an LPTV which is not tied to any specific city to accomplish, through serial minor modifications what should only be permitted by a major change – and by doing so cutting off other applicant’s opportunity to file for a new station at some point in the future when a new window does in fact open. The FCC had a secondary concern that many of these permits were received in a window almost 15 years ago when applicants were restricted to filing for stations in rural areas and, through multiple hops, some of these stations were moved into metropolitan areas.
Continue Reading $250,000 Fine and Surrender of 100 LPTV Authorizations Shows FCC Insistence on Permanent Construction of Stations Authorized by Construction Permits – “Serial Moves” Can Be Abuse of Process
This Week in Regulation for Broadcasters: February 26, 2022 to March 4, 2022
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
- The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau issued a Notice of Apparent Liability proposing a $20,000 fine on an iHeart radio station for
Two Proposed FCC Fines Suggest Tougher Enforcement – $32,000 for EEO Paperwork Issues and $20,000 for Alleged Contest Rule Violations
In the last week, the FCC issued proposed fines to two big radio companies for alleged violations of FCC requirements. One proposed fine was for apparent violations of the FCC’s EEO rules, and the other dealt with the obligations of broadcasters to disclose and follow rules for on-air contests. In both cases, the proposed fines focused on paperwork issues, not necessarily substantive issues. These decisions seem to signal to the broadcast industry generally that they need to dot every “I” and cross every “T” to avoid penalties like those proposed in these cases.
The EEO Notice of Apparent Liability, issued unanimously by all four FCC Commissioners, proposed a $32,000 fine on Cumulus Media because of one Annual EEO Public File Report that was uploaded to the online public file of co-owned stations in a Georgia market about 9 months after the due date for uploading the report (and the link to that report on each stations’ website was also missing for that period). In addition, the FCC said that another fine for failing to self-assess the station’s EEO program was warranted. Broadcasters are required to regularly assess the effectiveness of their EEO program. But what was that failure to assess? The evidence relied on in issuing this fine was that the public file report had not been uploaded for over 9 months so, if the licensee had been regularly assessing its program, it would have noted that the required report had not made it to the online public file. The decision did not cite any failure by the licensee to recruit widely when it had open positions, nor any failure of the group to conduct the required EEO non-vacancy specific outreach (described in our posts here and here). The alleged violations cited in the decision were simply tied to the failure to upload the required documents. While the base fines for these violations totaled less than $10,000, the proposed fine was increased because Cumulus previously had been found to have had FCC rule violations for EEO and sponsorship identification matters.
Continue Reading Two Proposed FCC Fines Suggest Tougher Enforcement – $32,000 for EEO Paperwork Issues and $20,000 for Alleged Contest Rule Violations
FCC Urging All Communications Companies to Secure Their Networks in Light of International Tensions
With global tensions obviously at an extremely high level, we thought that we would reprint an FCC warning that we noted in one of our weekly updates of FCC actions just a month ago – alerting companies in all sectors of the communications industry of the possible threat of Russian cyber-hacking and urging that all
This Week in Regulation for Broadcasters: February 19, 2022 to February 25, 2022
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
- The FCC proposed a $32,000 fine to a subsidiary of Cumulus Media for EEO and public file violations by a