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Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published the FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others.  This month’s issue includes:

  • FCC Warns New York Property Owners Over Pirate Radio Broadcasts
  • New Jersey AM Radio Station Cited for Tower, Power, and EAS Violations
  • FCC Targets Covered List Entity Over Equipment Authorization Violations

FCC Requires Early License Renewal Applications for Over 80 TV and LPTV Stations in Transfer of Control Investigation

The FCC’s Media Bureau issued an Order directing a broadcaster with over 80 TV and LPTV stations spread across nearly 30 states to file early license renewal applications for all of its stations.  The Order states that the Media Bureau has been investigating whether the licensee engaged in unauthorized transfers of control of its station licenses and, despite seemingly having received responses to two Letters of Inquiry (LOIs), determined that further action was warranted.  Notably, this Order was released the day before the FCC mandated early license renewal applications from ABC, ostensibly for its DEI efforts, leading many to suggest that this action the day before may have been taken to deprive ABC of the argument that calling for accelerated license renewal applications is unprecedented at the FCC.

Under the Communications Act and the FCC’s rules, a broadcaster may not assign or transfer control of a station license, either directly or indirectly, without prior Commission approval.  This requirement applies not only to formal ownership changes, but also to situations involving “de facto” control.  A de facto transfer occurs when a licensee no longer retains ultimate control over key aspects of its stations’ operations, including programming, personnel, and finances.  Although the Order does not describe the specific conduct under review, investigations of this nature often focus on whether operational or financial control shifted to a third party without first obtaining the required FCC authorization to do so.

The Order asserts that the FCC has authority to require early filing of broadcast license renewal applications when doing so is necessary to conduct an investigation and to evaluate the licensee’s compliance with its public interest obligations.  In this case, the Bureau concluded that it was “essential” to call the licenses in for early renewal.  As a result, the licensee must file license renewal applications for all of its stations within 30 days.

While the Order does not impose any immediate financial penalties, requiring the filing and prosecution of an early license renewal application, particularly for such a large number of stations, is costly and creates additional risks for the licensee.  The license renewal process requires the licensee to certify its continuing compliance with the FCC’s rules and its qualifications to remain an FCC licensee.  By moving up the license renewal application filing deadline, the FCC gives itself an immediate opportunity to review the licensee’s qualifications and rule compliance to determine whether license renewal, a short-term license renewal, or a license renewal with a fine or consent decree, is the appropriate regulatory action.

After the Order was released, the licensee filed a Petition for Reconsideration arguing that the FCC’s action was unprecedented, exceeded the Media Bureau’s delegated authority, and departed from longstanding FCC practice regarding early license renewal applications. The Petition also asserted that the underlying ownership issues had already been disclosed to the FCC and were the subject of pending transfer applications and an ongoing investigation to address them, obviating the need for early license renewal applications.

FCC Issues Short-Term License Renewal to Mississippi AM Station for Additional Public File Violations Following Consent Decree Over Prior Public File Violations

The FCC’s Media Bureau issued an Order on Reconsideration modifying a prior Memorandum Opinion and Order that had approved a Consent Decree resolving an investigation into potential violations of the Commission’s Public Inspection File rule by a Mississippi AM station.  Under the Consent Decree, the Bureau agreed to grant the station’s license renewal application upon satisfaction of certain conditions, including payment of a $1,000 “voluntary contribution,” the implementation of a compliance plan, and the absence of any additional violations.

Shortly after the Consent Decree was adopted on April 1, 2026, the Bureau determined that the station committed a new Public File violation by failing to timely upload a required quarterly Issues/Programs List by its April 10, 2026 deadline.  Because this violation occurred after execution of the Consent Decree, it was not covered by the settlement and was considered a “new violation” in evaluating the station’s pending license renewal application.  The Bureau found that failing to comply with the Public File rule, particularly so soon after committing to a compliance plan, constituted a serious and repeated violation that was part of a pattern of noncompliance. Continue reading →

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Time moves slowly in the regulatory universe, at least until you are facing a deadline.  It was in 2022 that I first wrote about the then-upcoming September 15, 2022 deadline for broadcasters to disclose whether all content “aired pursuant to the lease of time on the station” had a “foreign governmental entity” behind it, in which case the broadcaster needed to disclose that foreign sponsorship both on-air and in the station’s Public Inspection File.  The task was made more difficult by the broad definition of a foreign governmental entity, which included not just foreign governments, but “foreign political parties, agents of foreign principals, and United States-based foreign media outlets.”

The part of the rule requiring broadcasters to independently investigate whether those leasing airtime were foreign governmental entities was overturned by the courts in July 2022, but that didn’t prevent the remainder of the rule from going into effect in 2022.  The remainder (as summarized by the FCC) included:

(1) Inform the lessee of the foreign sponsorship disclosure requirement.
(2) Ask the lessee whether it falls into any of the categories that would qualify it as a “foreign governmental entity.”
(3) Ask the lessee whether it knows if any individual/entity further back in the chain of
producing/distributing the programming to be aired qualifies as a foreign governmental entity and has provided some type of inducement to air the programming.
(4) Memorialize the above-listed inquiries and retain such memorialization in its records for the remainder of the license term or for one year, whichever is longer.

The FCC, unwilling to settle for 4/5 of the apple and obviously stung by the court’s rebuke, altered the rule in June 2024 to sidestep the court’s ruling.  Since the court had found that the FCC lacked statutory authority to compel broadcasters to obtain sponsorship information from anyone other than their employees and program sponsors, the FCC amended the rule to require that either (1) the broadcaster and the sponsor execute separate certifications “reflecting the communications and inquiries required under the existing rules,” or (2) the broadcaster “ask their lessees for screenshots of lessees’ search results of two federal government websites [DOJ’s FARA website and the FCC’s U.S.-based foreign media outlets reports].”  In other words, the FCC’s maneuver was that if it was beyond its authority to make broadcasters conduct due diligence searches of those two government websites, it wasn’t beyond its authority to demand broadcasters still conduct due diligence research by asking their content providers/sponsors to search those same two websites and provide the search results to the broadcaster.

It’s an onerous requirement given that broadcasters have no legal right to demand anything of their content providers/sponsors, and those same providers can simply elect to take their business to literally every other form of media without facing such regulatory hurdles.  While unwelcome, it was still largely manageable because the FCC in adopting the original rule had made clear that a lease of airtime did not include “traditional, short-form advertising,” and leases of blocks of airtime on broadcast stations are relatively rare compared to traditional ad sales.

Unfortunately, in the later June 2024 Order, the FCC “clarified” the rule to make clear that it “will not apply to sales of advertising for commercial goods and services to the extent that such programming would not otherwise be subject to the general sponsorship disclosure rules, as set forth in section 73.1212(f) of our rules.”  So it would apply to ads that are not for “commercial goods and services.”  That includes ads for nonprofits and ads that don’t fit within Section 73.1212(f).  One example of an ad that is not for a commercial product or service is a U.S. Navy recruiting ad, meaning that broadcasters would need to collect certifications/proof that the U.S. Navy is not a representative of a foreign government before airing its recruiting ads.

The Order then plunged the regulatory dagger deeper, explicitly stating that the rule would apply to the airing of paid Public Service Announcements (PSAs) and all political advertising unless placed by a candidate.  The sheer volume of political ads and the pace at which they are changed in the months leading up to an election is staggering, with ample FCC Political File disclosure requirements already bedeviling stations trying to handle that workload.  The notion of demanding yet more information and documentation from a political advertiser adds to the burden on station employees while giving political advertisers one more reason to take their advertising elsewhere, where they will face none of those regulatory headaches.  And let’s be honest; some advertisers will be absolutely offended by the mere suggestion that they could be connected to a foreign government.

Because no one could figure out how to make such a labor and paperwork-intensive process work in the real world, and because the paperwork requirements had to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget before they could go into effect, the FCC originally announced the amended rule would go into effect a year later, on June 10, 2025.  Then, late in the day on June 10, 2025, the FCC announced an extension of the compliance deadline to December 8, 2025.  Announcing extensions for what appeared to many to be a fundamentally unworkable rule became a running feature here on CommLawCenter.

So I was not entirely surprised to find myself writing on December 5, 2025, one business day before the next deadline, that the FCC had just announced a further extension of the deadline to June 7, 2026.  That post ended with the hopeful message that the FCC might “use this added time to streamline these rather unwieldy requirements before next June.”

That proved partially prophetic.  This time around the FCC didn’t wait until the last minute to announce its plans regarding when broadcasters must come into compliance with the amended foreign sponsorship rule.  While today’s FCC Public Notice emphasized that the deadline for complying with the amended foreign sponsorship rule remains June 7, 2026, it announced that it is suspending the compliance deadline for advertisements and paid PSAs for “two years or until further public notice, whichever comes first.”

More important than the two-year extension is the reason given for it: “this delay of the advertisement and paid PSA regulation is necessary for the Commission to evaluate the costs and burdens associated with these requirements to ensure that there is sufficient offsetting public benefit.”  In other words, the FCC is reassessing whether the burden imposed by expanding the “diligence” requirement to advertising and paid PSAs makes any sense given the substantial burdens involved and the lack of any record evidence demonstrating that broadcast advertisements are being used as undisclosed propaganda tools by foreign governments.

That doesn’t mean that the non-diligence parts of the rule don’t still apply to advertisements and paid PSAs.  While broadcasters won’t be required to provide certifications or government database search results demonstrating that an ad sponsor is not connected to a foreign government, if the broadcaster has actual knowledge that the sponsor is connected to a foreign government, it must still ensure the ad includes an on-air disclosure of that fact, and place a record of it in its Public Inspection File.

So the next time you see a “Visit Scandinavia” ad that portrays Scandinavia as a pleasant place to visit, don’t fall for it.  That’s just what the Scandinavian governments want you to think.

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June 1 is the deadline for broadcast stations licensed to communities in Arizona, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming to place their Annual EEO Public File Report in their Public Inspection File and post the report on their station website.

Under the FCC’s EEO Rule, all radio and television station employment units (“SEUs”), regardless of staff size, must afford equal opportunity to all qualified persons and practice nondiscrimination in employment.

In addition, those SEUs with five or more full-time employees (“Nonexempt SEUs”) must also comply with the FCC’s three-prong outreach requirements.  Specifically, Nonexempt SEUs must (i) broadly and inclusively disseminate information about every full-time job opening, except in exigent circumstances, (ii) send notifications of full-time job vacancies to referral organizations that have requested such notification, and (iii) earn a certain minimum number of EEO credits based on participation in various non-vacancy-specific outreach initiatives (“Menu Options”) suggested by the FCC, during each of the two-year segments (four segments total) that comprise a station’s eight-year license term.  These Menu Option initiatives include, for example, sponsoring job fairs, participating in job fairs, and having an internship program.

Nonexempt SEUs must prepare and place their Annual EEO Public File Report in the Public Inspection Files and on the websites of all stations comprising the SEU (if they have a website) by the anniversary date of the filing deadline for that station’s license renewal application.  The Annual EEO Public File Report summarizes the SEU’s EEO activities during the previous 12 months, and the licensee must maintain adequate records to document those activities.

For a detailed description of the EEO Rule and practical assistance in preparing a compliance plan, broadcasters should consult The FCC’s Equal Employment Opportunity Rules and Policies – A Guide for Broadcasters published by Pillsbury’s Communications Practice Group.

Deadline for the Annual EEO Public File Report for Nonexempt Radio and Television SEUs

Consistent with the above, June 1, 2026 is the date by which Nonexempt SEUs of radio and television stations licensed to communities in the states identified above, including Class A television stations, must (i) place their Annual EEO Public File Report in the Public Inspection Files of all stations comprising the SEU, and (ii) post the Report on the websites, if any, of those stations.  Once the new Report is posted on a station’s website, the prior year’s Report may be removed from that website. Continue reading →