The FCC is firing out notification to a number of stations and MVPDs notifying them that they have been randomly selected for an EEO audit. Stations are expected to widely disseminate information about job openings to assure that the pool of respondents seeking employment is as diverse as possible.
The FCC says about 5% of all possible EEO targets are included in the audit schedule each year.
Stations with fewer than five full time employees are not required to follow EEO guidelines when hiring, but they are expected to respond to the FCC audit. They must list all of the full timers and their job title. A full time employee is defined as one who is regularly scheduled to work 30 hours or more per week.
Information pertaining to EEO is of course expected to be part of each station’s public file, and a file check will be part of the audit.
Licensees who broker a station to a second party must forward the EEO request to the party renting the station, who is expected to respond, along with the licensee – in other words, the FCC should receive two reports from any station involved in an LMA.
