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Hypothetical Question: FCC Compliance

J

JRZFM100

Well DFW, you wanted something serious to chew on, so I pose this "hypothetical" scenario for the DFW boards to ponder-

You know for a fact that a local Dallas licensee of a single broadcast station has operated in clear violation of FCC rules concerning Public File and EEO Recruitment during their present license period, expiring in 2013.

You have voiced your concerns directly to the station's newby (only a few years of experience) GM to voice your concerns of the licensee's repetitive compliance failures. The GM's response is to dismiss you and laugh, due to a direct failure of requisite experience and the inability to grasp the veracity of a multiple compliance breech being raised during a license renewal year; a direct result of the GM's complete lack of experience and naivete. Remember, this GM is so new, him/her has never ever been through an FCC licenses renewal before.

Having failed to convince the GM of the compliance failures, do you:

(a) Allow the licensee to Check YES to affirm compliance in EEO Recruitment & Public File completeness on the 2013 license renewal application and wait to surface the GM's ineptitude in a filing before the Commission during the license renewal process.

(b) Expend additional effort to bypass the local GM and correspond directly with the licensee's FCC counsel (who will understand the gravity of the situation due to precedents in fines for willfully and intentionally deceiving to the Commission) such that their counsel can avert willful and intentional miss-representation of compliance on an FCC license renewal application.

(c) None of the above. Allow the licensee ineptitude to continue, unabated.

-----

I've got a few licensee's in this category, but am particularly motivated by one licensee.

AND, we have seen an activist Commission of late, willing to hand out fines at the drop of a hat this renewal round due to similar violations.

Just wondering..
 
I'd choose option A. Write a simple letter to the FCC during the renewal window with 1-2 pages of detail.
 
Well, if you still work in the business, I hope your own affairs are 100% in order when you pull the trigger. In my experience, when someone complains and Uncle Charlie comes to town, he visits everyone.
 
radiogooroo said:
Well, if you still work in the business, I hope your own affairs are 100% in order when you pull the trigger. In my experience, when someone complains and Uncle Charlie comes to town, he visits everyone.
Click to expand...

This is exactly correct. An account of mine in OK blew the whistle on a competitor, and all the sudden he had an inspector at his office. After 15 public file violations, and failing a field survey. He spent about $40 grand in engineering work, and paid $5,000 in fines for the violations.

Sometimes that whistle is full of paint and will get all over you too.
 
I don't think the Commission is comin to town on this one...

This is purely an administrative violation for which I have collected sufficient proof via photo copies of the present file AND recordings of my visits wherein the licensee's personnel were as kind to say aloud "Yep, our file is not complete, we've been working hard to substantially "reconstruct" our file" - my 1st visit. On my follow up visit, they were kind enough even to speak the words "Those materials you were looking for are no longer missing -- we added them back to our file in the last week to make it complete. - my 2nd visit.

In this compliance area, the licensee is required to continuously update the file, and must attest to continuous compliance over the entire license period. Such post-facto "reconstruction" in this area is NOT permissible.

I'd like to see them voluntarily disclose their omission to the Commission (with a little encouragement to their counsel) such that there is no need to object to their renewal, a much larger involvement.

All they have to do is check NO and explain. But I can't seem to impress the GM or the licensee chain of command that their are rules published in 47 CFR Part 73 applicable to broadcast station operation. - - -Rules? What rules? They never heard of rules.

The REAL question here, because this is what drives my frustration, is what to do with licensee ineptitude?

Oh Lord, the licensee ineptitude is so great, and my boat is so small!
 
There are several of us here that would love to see the public file for K240DS and its so called originating station in east Texas!
 
Well then, by all means proceed with your little witch hunt! Today's FCC could really care less about technical problems, but they love clerical errors and oversights.

If you really have gone in there and recorded these people, I pity you. You're a small, sad little man, apparently with a serious case of self importance or a vendetta.

I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish, but I can guarantee you the GM you apparently have an issue with won't be fired. When heads roll, it will be whomever does the clerical work there and possibly the engineer. Hopefully their families won't suffer because of you.

Have fun playing paperwork gotcha. You're a loser!
 
I wish you luck. And if you manage to get the FCC to do anything, maybe you can get them to deal with the wonderful 95.9 translator that haunts this board (and our airwaves) every so often.
 
Well then, by all means proceed with your little witch hunt! Today's FCC could really care less about technical problems, but they love clerical errors and oversights.

If you really have gone in there and recorded these people, I pity you. You're a small, sad little man, apparently with a serious case of self importance or a vendetta.

I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish, but I can guarantee you the GM you apparently have an issue with won't be fired. When heads roll, it will be whomever does the clerical work there and possibly the engineer. Hopefully their families won't suffer because of you.

Have fun playing paperwork gotcha. You're a loser!
Click to expand...

No insult taken. And I really do appreciate your perspective on this matter. Feedback like yours was the original reason for my post. However, I am compelled to ask if the investigative notions and expose printed in the Observer are also motivated by reporter self importance or vendetta, or do they serve a vital public interest by identifying and surfacing ineptitude as part of public consciousness and continuous improvement, an enduring quest for change?

Perhaps this whole topic would be better posted in the "Unfair Park" blog:
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/

That's probably a better venue to gauge the importance of ethics, truth and professionalism in this particular case.
 
There's a difference between newspaper reporting and simply stirring s**t. FCC paperwork is largely B.S. IMO merely designed to generate fines.

There is a country station in Texas that has been popped twice for EEO violations. Never mind the fact that this station employs more minorities than any non-ethnic formatted station in town. They have TWO full-time DJs on the station who are black, and this is a COUNTRY station.

At the time of their fines, they had various other minority status individuals working in various other capacities around the station.

Their crime? Their EEO paperwork wasn't quite right.

See, under the FCC's EEO regulations, you don't have to actually hire any minorities, you just have to do the paperwork and prove you tried to get the word out about any openings to the minority community.

Here's a station that not only tried to recruit minorities, they succeeded in a big way and were fined in spite of it.

The day that happened was the day I lost all faith in the Commission's busywork / paperwork requirements. They're a joke and don't serve any legitimate purpose.
 
Let me take this point by point in order to see what you think given the precise detail-

(1)
There's a difference between newspaper reporting and simply stirring s**t. FCC paperwork is largely B.S. IMO merely designed to generate fines.
Click to expand...

I totally agree. Am NOT looking to stir anyone or generate some unnecessary fines or waste time. I feel like the Dallas Observer in this case (and I think Observer might well be interested, given the name of the licensee).

I find myself frustrated with the inept administration who does not know or care about the rules. Totally unaware and totally unconcerned. These are "box checkers" who will simply check YES on all their compliance issues. And checking yes when the answer is clearly no is a willful and intentional deception. And in more than one area.

Moreover, there exists a close precedent in case law resulting in fines around $350,000. And that was to an NCE station. This is a commercial licensee and an aggressive Commission. The fines could be higher.

(2)
See, under the FCC's EEO regulations, you don't have to actually hire any minorities, you just have to do the paperwork and prove you tried to get the word out about any openings to the minority community.
Click to expand...

Understood. What happens when a licensee does not even understand the burden of proof for recruitment... this licensee doesn't even go the distance to advertise a position broadly enough to disseminate to minority populations and they does not do / retain the paperwork in order to prove they tried, as is the case I speak of.

When the issue was raised with the person the licensee designated on their ownership report, the designee said "what do you mean by a recruitment source"?

(3)
I lost all faith in the Commission's busywork / paperwork requirements. They're a joke and don't serve any legitimate purpose
Click to expand...

And I agree with that as well. The Commission is a total disappointment, especially in the area of compliance and enforcement.

I think this licensee ought to be incentivzed to self disclose through the renewal process.That would be the best for all parties.

And DFW board, please give me some detail on your concerns with the translator.... I'd be more than happy to drive to East Texas and look at that originating station's public file.

What exactly is wrong with the xlator?
 
PS... I've popped in to have a look at more than a half dozen public files with 60 miles of DFW.

Found one station with a 6 page public file. That's it, just 6 pages total. I said where is the rest of the file? They said, "that is all"... our public file "was destroyed" back in 2009.

And I thought wow, it's only been three whole years, and you haven't even attempted to reconstruct the file beyond the six pages you have accrued since the original file was lost?

But hey, these guys were not arrogant, dismissive nor inept by intention. So I have no concern for them. Hope they get it together before renewal.

Seriously, I looked up that xlator and found the originating station... I'd go and take a look.

What is the concern with the xlator?
 
JRZFM100 said:
Seriously, I looked up that xlator and found the originating station... I'd go and take a look.

What is the concern with the xlator?
Click to expand...

There's so much to say about this, but instead of re-hashing all the details start with this:

http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=101777.0

Follow up with this, which includes video of a field trip to the home of 95.9's "originating station":

http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=203839.msg1818124#msg1818124

There are a number of other threads about it, just search K240DS or Garland 95.9 translator under this site's "advanced search" option.
 
long story short: the translator isn't a translator. It's a low power (??) station in Garland that ONLY has interest in Garland community. NOT whatever-station-in-east-texas-this-week-that-they-claim-to-be-translating. I drove back out to Emory last weekend. Originating station isn't even on the air. They have no interest in ETX. No local phone number (illegal), no STUDIOS, no nothing. They simply processed the paperwork so they can "legally" (cough*bull#$@*cough) translate their Garland-oriented programming, AND SPOTS!!
 
JRZFM100 said:
Well DFW, you wanted something serious to chew on, so I pose this "hypothetical" scenario for the DFW boards to ponder-
...

Just wondering..
Click to expand...

Personally, if the violation isn't directly affecting me or my paycheck, I keep my head down and mind my own business. You notified the people who need to know. If they choose to ignore your warning, it's on them. Just make sure you CYA and then let it be. Otherwise, as previously mentioned, you may get more than you bargained for.
 
Okay, so I think it is a U-nanimous decision, "let the inept be inept"; it's not at all worth the effort.

And besides, you really can't teach an old dog new tricks. In fact, you shouldn't have to teach an old licensee or their novice manager compliance practices in the first place. So... let the inept be inept.

Now, as for that Garland translator goes, when I looked through their application history, wow, it looked like at one time the current owner agreed to pay $180k for the translator. The price was ultimately knocked down to $90k (I think).

I haven't been there, but would fully believe they are originating their own programming based upon statements herein and the distance to and parameters for their originating station.

Does anyone really want it off and / or to see the matter adjudicated? That would be a very simple complaint to write. Very simple. Could be filed at any time, but best to file it in the renewal window. Years ago, I used to have business cards for the Commission in Dallas, along with local names and contact numbers. Today, the request would have to go thru DC.

Yea, I know, the licensee is mighty and powerful and all knowing! (Be afraid... very afraid!)

That leads to another question (and probably a new and more complex topic) so I'll just ask this rhetorically here.. are Church operated radio stations really about outreach - you know, reaching out to the people - or is their real purpose intake ... for the purpose of financial gain ?
 
In one of the other topics I said I wish Garland 95.9 would go away so I'd have a better chance of listening to 95.9 KFWR The Ranch in my neck of the woods (Carrollton). If Garland was truly playing by the rules, I would not complain. I emailed folks at The Ranch about Garland 95.9 and they didn't seem to interested. I left it at that.
 
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