No Fine for Big Radio Groups Over Political File Violations
Six of the country’s largest radio groups will pay no monetary penalty for repeated political file obligations because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the radio industry, said a release and consent decrees on settlements for iHeartRadio, Cumulus, Entercom, Beasley,…
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Alpha and Salem. “We recognize that this period has placed the radio broadcast industry as a whole under significant financial stress from a dramatic reduction in advertising revenues,” the consent decrees say as a reason for the lack of civil penalty. Most also point to the broadcasters having confessed to the violations as a reason for the light punishment, but Entercom’s were discovered through a complaint and FCC investigation and still won’t involve a penalty. Of Entercom’s 234 stations, 196 were found to have political file violations, the Entercom consent decree said. The other consent decrees said the broadcast groups notified the FCC of multiple violations among their stations, but don’t provide further details on the scope of the violations. “In February 2020, iHeart voluntarily informed the Bureau that many of its stations had not routinely been uploading records of requests for the purchase of political broadcast time in a timely manner,” is a representative example. The groups committed to best practices and compliance plans and improved their political file compliance in 2020 during the pandemic, the consent decrees said. The compliance plans require the broadcasters to file reports on political file compliance through December 2021. “It is critical that information about political advertising is transparent to the public and candidates for office,” said Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey. “Adherence to the requirements in the consent decrees will ensure compliance with the online political file rules during this election year.” The current FCC “has found several creative ways to use the COVID-19 pandemic to allow broadcasters to avoid compliance with the rules and, now, to exculpate them from violations,” emailed Andrew Schwartzman, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society senior counselor. He represented transparency groups bringing complaints about broadcast political file obligations in the past. “Even with these wrist slaps, the Commission is at least showing broadcasters that they must pay attention to the political file rules,” he said. The broadcasters didn’t comment.