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Requests the substitution of channel 27 for channel 8 at Jonesboro, Arkansas, in the DTV Table of Allotments

Requests the substitution of channel 20 for channel 7 at Amarillo, Texas in the DTV Table of Allotments

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Issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture in the amount of $1,500 to Iglesia Sinai Pentecostes, Inc., for failure to timely file a license renewal application for Station WLDC-LP, Goshen, Indiana

Requests an amendment of the DTV Table of Allotments to delete channel 10 at Peoria, Illinois, substituting channel 10 at Oswego, Illinois. Further requests modification of WAOE's license to specify Oswego as its community of license

Requests the substitution of channel 27 for channel 12 at Augusta, Georgia, in the DTV Table of Allotments

Maquoketa Broadcasting Company enters into consent decree to resolve political file investigation

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Requests the substitution of channel 21 for channel 9 at St. George, Utah, in the DTV Table of Allotments

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Requests the substitution of channel 32 for channel 11 at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in the DTV Table of Allotments

Requests the substitution of channel 23 for channel 11 at Savannah, Georgia, in the DTV Table of Allotments

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Trending Media, Inc. enters into consent decree to resolve political file investigation

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This week, the FCC designated for hearing the license renewal applications for a number of Alabama radio stations.

Why? Who better than noted Wilkinson Barker Knauer attorney David Oxenford to explain the situation.

Simply put, the stations owner has been convicted of felony ethics violations stemming from misconduct while he served in the Alabama legislature.

The hearing will determine the effect of those felony convictions on the character of the licensee to hold a broadcast license, Oxenford explains.

“The Communications Act requires that a broadcast licensee (and its owners) must have the requisite character to operate the station,” he says in a newly penned blog post at BroadcastLawBlog.com. “Character is reviewed whenever a party seeks to acquire a broadcast license, including when they file for the renewal of that license. In egregious circumstances, the FCC can even move to revoke the licenses held by a licensee outside of the license renewal process. Even the sale of a license by a party without the required character qualifications may be prohibited by the FCC, as the Commission does not want to see a wrongdoer profit from the disposition of what is seen as a government asset – the FCC license.”

Character has been defined by the FCC through numerous policy statements issued periodically over the last 50 years, and has been further refined by precedents established in individual cases. “This week’s case gives us the opportunity to look at what conduct the FCC considers in assessing the character of any broadcast application, and the factors that are reviewed in determining the impact of bad conduct on the ability of the applicant to hold an FCC license,” Oxenford notes.

While not at issue in this week’s case, perhaps the most common type of character issue that comes before the FCC relates to conduct before the agency itself. Oxenford says, “Misrepresentations or ‘lack of candor’ before the agency are serious offenses, as the FCC feels that it must be able to rely on the truthfulness of representations made to it by its licensees. As the FCC cannot verify every factual statement made in every application or other filing made before the agency, it considers it a serious offense if an applicant makes untrue or misleading statements to the Commission in any of its submissions to the agency.”

Similarly, he adds, compliance with the FCC’s own rules can be considered in a character context. “While the FCC generally recognizes that licensees are not perfect and can err in their compliance, a pattern of regulatory noncompliance can indicate that the applicant does not have the requisite character to be a licensee. In most cases, forfeitures will be imposed for simple violations of FCC rules, but more serious, repeated violations can lead to stiffer penalties or even the loss of a license.

Harder character questions are raised, as in this week’s case, by misconduct that occurs outside the FCC’s jurisdiction.

“In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the FCC arrived at a standard that is generally still used today, where the Commission considers not only broadcast and other media-related legal violations, but also felonies of any sort,” Oxenford says. “The Commission’s reasoning, as reiterated in this week’s decision, is that any serious crimes could indicate that an applicant cannot be trusted to follow FCC rules.”

FCC forms require applicants to list FCC character issues found in other cases, as well as all felonies, all media-related antitrust violations, fraudulent statements to another governmental unit, and any finding of discrimination. These legal matters need to be reported not just for the applicants, but for other businesses or activities in which the applicant’s principals have interests, Oxenford notes.

“In most cases, the FCC will not itself make the determination as to whether an individual violated some law or regulation, but instead will consider misconduct when it has been adjudicated by a court or other government agency,” he points out. “However, the FCC has left itself room to look at other egregious misconduct even if that conduct has not already been finally determined by a court or government tribunal.”

But in any case, whether it be a felony or any other misconduct, the fact that the conduct occurred does not in and of itself mean that someone is unfit to be a broadcast licensee.

“Instead, the FCC needs to weigh multiple factors to determine if the conduct is disqualifying,” Oxenford says. “The FCC will weigh factors including the willfulness of the conduct, the frequency of the conduct that led to the misconduct findings, how current the findings are, how serious the wrongdoing was, whether individuals with management authority over the stations were involved in the misconduct, whether there were efforts to rectify any wrongs that were done, the history of FCC compliance of the applicant, and whether there has been a rehabilitation of the applicant. This is a balancing process. An individual who was involved in some minor crime long ago, served his or her time, and has led a productive post-conviction career might not be disqualified from broadcast ownership. But other more recent crimes, or those that are particularly shocking to the conscience, can lead to a stigma for much longer periods.”

All of these factors are weighed through an administrative hearing, which as of November 2020 will largely be a paper-based process, rather than the previous approach of a live hearing before an FCC Administrative Law Judge.

“As with any area of FCC law, this article cannot cover the many nuances of the Commission’s policies in assessing the character of an applicant coming before it,” Oxenford concludes. “Suffice it to say that if an applicant, or any principal in an applicant, has had any issues in dealing with the FCC or any other legal trouble in any business or activity in which they are involved, consult counsel, as particular facts can make big differences in the outcome. Even in the most serious cases, there may be circumstances where a station can be sold or otherwise disposed of in a way to avoid a total loss that would arise from a lost license. It is a complex area that needs to be navigated carefully.”

MORE FROM THE RBR+TVBR ARCHIVES:

With Conviction Appeal Nixed, Former Alabama Politician Spins Stations Adam Jacobson By 2016, Mike Hubbard had built a sports radio and television network and enjoyed a successful political career as the first Republican Speaker of the House in Alabama in 136 years. Today, he’s embarking on a four-year jail sentence for ethics violations tied to his non-broadcast career. As such, he’s spinning his radio assets in a deal that’s bound to get a lot of attention.

As president of Stonecom Radio, President/GM Larry Stone oversees a group of four radio stations serving the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee. Before that, he spent 17 years as an Executive Producer and game-day host of “Titans Radio,” the NFL’s Tennessee Titans Radio Network.

The broadcaster came to Tennessee in 1997 to build the new radio station group from the ground up. Now, he’s frustrated and has something to say about the state of the industry.

In short, Stone laments, “We are a crisis point in radio.’

And, his ire is fueled by recent flubs and frustration with syndication partners and networks his stations are aligned with.

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Thirty years ago this summer, a Class D AM licensed to Cambridge, Mass., was acquired by an individual who converted what had been a Gospel station to a blend of what is perhaps best-described as “light Adult Contemporary Oldies and instrumentals.”

Over time, the owner added an FM translator, and signals in Maine.

Now, an expansion to Cape Cod is in play, thanks to Langer Broadcasting.

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA. — Since the fiscal third quarter of 2020, The Walt Disney Co. has been, in the view of MoffettNathanson Senior Analyst Michael Nathanson, “essentially a tale of three different mice.”

Say what? It’s a metaphor for three profit segments Nathanson has closely examined, following Thursday’s release by Disney of its fiscal Q1 results — a performance that beat EPS and revenue estimates as Disney+ subscriber numbers soared to 94.9 million.

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The author is executive director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. NFCB commentaries are featured regularly at www.radioworld.com.

Commercial radio stations over the last week yanked tracks by country music superstar Morgan Wallen after his use of a racist slur went viral. Cumulus has ordered an end to radio hosts circulating election conspiracy theories that fueled the Jan. 6 riot led by extremists. WSMN firing Dianna Ploss over the summer is one of many instances of stations booting hosts for racist behavior. And, the radio industry has watched as more than a dozen noncommercial licensees have grappled the last few years with accusations by former and current staff of abuse by leadership and veteran hosts.

To their credit, many stations today are trying to do the right thing by making it clear they want to be inclusive. But making things better means also being transparent about how radio stations have contributed to the condition the nation finds itself in.

[Read: Community Broadcaster: DJing the Generational Divide]

Commercial radio’s sordid relationship with the racial line is no secret. Take, for example, WFUV this week documenting the history of what was known as Black radio. Let’s be clear though. Black radio then was a term that defined the industry that had to emerge for Black performers who were banned by larger radio stations that played white artists. What’s now the urban format was, not too many decades ago, called Black radio. Even as late as the 1990s, radio doing a pop format marginalized or entirely avoided Black artists and art forms, such as early hip-hop. More pervasively, as Danyel Smith points out, Americans’ perceptions of “crossover” music and performances were shaped by white acceptance of Black performers.

And let’s not even get into commercial talk radio, whose most prominent name, Rush Limbaugh, unleashed the floodgates of bigoted hucksterism that still influences local call-in shows.

For all its notions of mission, noncommercial radio has plenty of its own skeletons. Consider the many stations in the 1970s to 1990s that shelved longtime broadcasts of a traditionally Black art form, jazz, in favor of super-serving affluent white audiences. In this quest, stations wrung out virtually all color from their sound; it was bad enough that Chenjerai Kumanyika called out “public radio voice” in 2015. Considering the generations-long quest to cleanse public radio of its personality and culture, is it really any surprise prestige brands like WNYC became the poster children for terrible bosses and discrimination complaints? Stations to this day still struggle to create more equitable relationships with staff of color and make inroads in Black communities.

Obviously, radio is not at fault for all that ails the country. Yet we can’t have it both ways, demanding attention for positive work, but assigning blame elsewhere when radio contributes or has contributed negatively to public life by reinforcing prejudice. Radio has historically had the greatest reach of any media. At a time when accepting responsibility is becoming more common, we have a rare opportunity to be part of tendency that clears the air at last.

Still, there’s a contingent that says radio’s failures are in the past and people need to get over it. True vision in leadership, however, means acknowledging and apologizing for how business was done before, and striving to be more honest in correcting our errors. It also means openly talking about it, and sharing with audiences the steps you’re taking now to be an organization positioned to foster an equitable future. Scores of industries now understand this is a moment to atone and spark new relationships with our listeners.

 

The post Community Broadcaster: Has Radio Done Enough to Fix its Racist Past? appeared first on Radio World.