The FCC on Thursday (12/6) started to send out by e-mail notices to numerous radio stations throughout the country, notifying them that there are issues with their online public inspection files.
The email notices do not reveal what the specific problem is, notes Wilkinson Barker Knauer Partner David Oxenford.
Instead, the notices simply say that there are issues and ask for notice of corrective actions to the FCC.
“We have been warning of the FCC’s concern about incomplete or inactive online public files for some time, and the potential impact that noncompliance could have on license renewal, which starts for radio stations in the Washington, DC area in June 2019, and then moves across the country in a three-year renewal cycle,” Oxenford says. “Clearly, this is a warning to stations that the FCC is watching their public files, and that compliance problems will bring issues, and possibly fines, if the files are not complete by license renewal time (or even earlier if documents were not timely created).”
As Oxenford has written before (here and here), the biggest issues will likely be with stations not uploading Quarterly Issues Programs Lists and, for stations that are part of clusters with 5 or more full-time employees, Annual EEO Public Inspection file reports.
“Look at your file now and make sure that you are in compliance with these and all other public file obligations to insure that you do not have issues that can come back to haunt you at renewal time – or at any other time that the FCC decides to use its enforcement authority to start issuing fines,” Oxenford suggests.
