12

The FCC and You

The Importance of Taking FCC Rules Seriously

Broadcasters sometimes look upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a very distant traffic cop, a bureaucracy that is more or less benign and whose rules do not require undue concern. This is a terrible mistake.

It is true that the FCC seldom intends to get really nasty with licensees. To its credit, the Commission tends to assume that each station is doing everything the way it’s supposed to—until it learns differently. However, when it does learn differently, it can get really unpleasant: large fines and even the loss of a license on occasion. There are two main ways in which the FCC discovers wrongdoing: through routine inspections and through complaints.

The Commission eventually inspects every broadcast station, usually without prior notice. When the inspectors walk in, the personnel at the station visited frequently warn other local stations in the hope that the favor may be returned someday. However, the inspectors are aware of this networking, and quite often these days they may choose not to visit any of the other stations in the locality just then. They really want to get a snapshot of the station they are inspecting as it normally operates.

Sooner or later, the inspectors from the regional FCC office will walk in on you. If your station is in a remote area, far from an FCC regional office, you may think that you’re relatively immune to a surprise inspection, but you are not. All stations are eventually visited. I hope for your sake that the FCC will not find serious violations during its visit of your station. The Commission’s fines tend to run between $2,500 and $20,000, but Congress has authorized fines of up to $250,000 for each individual offense, and now and then in egregious cases the Commission will assess as much as that. The FCC does not have a collections department, but when a fine is not paid, the Commission turns the matter over to the U.S. Department of Justice for collection.

There is one other way that the Commission learns in timely fashion of violations that can cause you lots of grief, and it works just as well in remote markets as in major ones: complaints. The Commission accepts and acts on complaints, regardless of whether they are signed or anonymous and regardless of whether they have come from a citizen or a competitor. The majority of complaints about stations come from other stations—for competitive and even malicious reasons. Those are the unsigned ones. If the complaint is about something you broadcast, there will no doubt be a tape cassette included with the complaint.

Are you taking the rules seriously yet?

Important FCC Rules

You are responsible for making sure that all programming-oriented FCC rules are being observed by the staff at your station. We dealt with two of these rules in Chapter 10: the Lottery Rule and the Sponsor Identification Rule. The violation of these two rules can usually be traced back to the actions of salespeople, but these are programming rules, and it’s vital that you prevent these problems before they occur. The station ownership and management will generally blame (and fire) you when the FCC acts on violation of these rules. The following programming-oriented rules are in effect at this writing.

Station Identification

A station identification (legal ID) is required when a station signs on the air, signs off the air, conducts equipment tests, and once hourly— as close to the top of the hour as possible. It must consist of the station’s call letters, followed immediately by the “city of license,” as shown on the station’s license. The license must be posted at the transmitter control point. Any other city or cities may be mentioned in the ID, but only after the city of license. (The only things that can legally come between the call letters and the city of license in the legal ID are the station’s frequency, or dial position, and the name of the owner of the station, as it appears on the license.)

Logging

Although the FCC does not presently require that a station have a “program log” to schedule the commercials and program elements and show that they’ve run, in practice very few stations can get by without one because a completed log is usually the only documentation available for billing that shows that the commercials ran as scheduled. If a station does keep a program log, all of the FCC’s logging rules apply to it.

The FCC requires that the log be treated as a legal document. The willful falsification of the log to misrepresent broadcast content will cost the station its license, no matter how minor the change may have been. The Commission feels that way about any lie told to it by station personnel; it relies on the candor and honesty of the licensee for self-regulation, and when the Commission finds that a licensee is not trustworthy, it adopts the attitude that the licensee does not have the character qualifications to have a license. Lying to the FCC is thus a “capital offense” for a station.

Of course, mistakes can occur when filling in a log, and when they do, they may be corrected—but only by the person (“operator”) who made them. The operator should initial the change to verify that he or she was indeed the one making the correction.

Meter Readings

Except in cases in which the transmitter is monitored automatically in accordance with FCC rules, an operator must be on duty at all times and must periodically take readings on the key meters. Most stations require that these readings be made at least every two hours. They must also be taken when the mode of operation is changed—such as when an AM station changes power or directional antenna pattern at sunset and sunrise—as well as at sign-on and sign-off.

For AM stations, the key readings are plate voltage, plate current, and antenna (or common point) current. In the case of solid-state transmitters, which have no power tubes and thus no plates, I’ve been told informally by FCC personnel that a power output wattmeter reading may substitute for the first two readings and the indirect-method calculation. For FM stations, the key readings are plate voltage, plate current, and transmitter power output.

Power Output Calculations

The Commission expects operators to be able to calculate the power output of the station from the readings taken because the purpose of the readings is to establish that the power transmitted is within the legal parameters—which are +5 percent and −10 percent of the licensed value. When the inspectors visit a station nowadays, they often ask the on-air operator to do these calculations, and they issue sanctions or fines if the operator can’t. Make sure that your people can do them.

There are two ways of calculating AM station power and one for FM stations. The “indirect method” applies to both, so called because you calculate what the output power ought to be based on the electricity that the tubes in the transmitter power-output stage are consuming. That calculation is:

Power in Watts = Plate Voltage × Plate Current

× Efficiency Factor

The efficiency factor is a percentage supplied by the manufacturer of the transmitter, and it should be posted for the reference of the staff. It can be as low as 30 percent (0.30) or as high as 80 percent (0.80), depending on the design of the transmitter.

If the plate voltage is shown in kilovolts (kv), it must be converted to volts, and if the plate current is shown in milliamperes (ma), it must be converted to amperes, or the result of the calculation will not be the correct power in watts. Kilo means “times 1,000,” so 1.4kv would be 1,400 volts; milli means “divided by 1,000,” so 500 ma would be 0.5 amperes.

The other method by which AM station power can be calculated is the “direct method”:

Power in Watts = (Antenna Current or Common Point

Current)² × Antenna Resistance

As you may recall from your school math courses, squaring a number means multiplying it by itself, so the formula can also be written as:

Power in Watts = (Antenna Current × Antenna Current)

× Antenna Resistance

Antenna current is called “common point current” when the station uses more than one transmitting tower in order to directionalize its signal. Common point current is the same as antenna current for the purposes of this calculation. Antenna resistance (usually a number under 100 ohms) is found listed on the station license.

An important note: The antenna current reading usually deflects upward when the station modulates (transmits the sound signal); the reading that must be read and logged is an unmodulated value. Logging a modulated antenna current reading almost certainly will be seen by an FCC inspector as a legally binding indication that the station was operating way above its licensed power when it really wasn’t. It’s unfortunate to get a fine when the station operation was correct, simply because somebody made a mistake on the log.

For FM, only the indirect method formula is used for calculation. The direct method for FM consists of simply reading the power output of the transmitter on its wattmeter.

I asked an FCC engineer how the “indirect method” can be calculated for FM stations using the new generation of solid-state transmitters. These are so new on the market, I find, that the FCC seems to be letting its local field personnel come up with an answer to this on a case-by-case basis. Because reading the wattmeter for transmitter power output is already the “direct method” for FM stations, might reading it satisfy both the direct and the indirect power determination for FM transmitters without tubes? The engineer I spoke with conceded that there was currently no official answer to this. The solution, for now, seems to be to check with the engineer in charge of the nearest regional FCC field office, and until a firm rule emerges, handle this in whatever way the engineer advises—and I suggest you try to get it in writing!

Tower Lights

Are there lights on your transmitting tower? If there are, even if the tower is owned by somebody else, your station is responsible for making sure that the lights are operating properly. Although the FCC only requires logging one observation per day of the tower lights (when they are operating correctly), the rules also specify that the operator must take action within a half hour of their failure. This means that the lights should be checked at intervals throughout the hours of darkness, either through direct observation or via a remote control. Violating this rule puts you afoul of not only the FCC, but the Federal Aviation Administration as well.

For that one logged observation per day, I recommend that the tower lights be checked very soon after sunset because if they are going to fail, in my experience the most likely time for it will be just when they are supposed to go on. If they do fail—and a failure of just the top flashing beacon constitutes a reportable failure because it defines the top of the tower for aircraft—the failure must be noted on the operating (or transmitter) log and then reported to the nearest office of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The telephone number of the FAA location to call should be posted for the airstaff, together with a flashlight so that it can be read and called in the event of a studio power failure that also affects the tower lights. The log entry must be repeated daily until the lights are repaired, and the FAA must be notified whenever the lights are restored to operation.

Contests

The FCC mandate about “licensee candor” means that the design and execution of any station contest must be fair and honest. Stations found to have rigged the outcome of a contest in any way can and will lose their license for it. Making sure that a contest is aboveboard is not hard, and ways of doing that were discussed in Chapter 7. However, I want to reinforce the point that the “player sheets” and other documentation of how the contest was conducted should be saved indefinitely in case a contestant later chooses to complain that he or she was not treated fairly. My suggestion is that you keep that contest information in the station’s Public Inspection File.

The Public Inspection File

I believe that the FCC is mistaken in believing that everyone in the community will benefit by having access to the Public Inspection File. As a rule, only competitors, activists, and FCC inspectors ever ask to look at it. Nonetheless, because the Commission considers it a very important part of the licensee’s obligations, it is, and that file is an important responsibility of yours—at least part of it is, unless your general manager specifically exempts you.

Meet with your manager and find out to what extent you are responsible for the Public Inspection File. When you find out, obtain a copy of the list of what the FCC expects to be in it. You can get this from the National Association of Broadcasters if your station is a member; if not, ask your station’s communications attorney in Washington, D.C. Failing that, obtain it from the nearest FCC regional office.

One of the things that’s supposed to be in the Public Inspection File is an FCC booklet explaining the file and listing its contents for the public. The trouble is that last time I checked, the required booklet was printed in the 1970s and was very much out-of-date. Make sure that you do have the booklet in your file, but rely on a more up-to-date list to check the contents for compliance.

Something else that must be in the file is a list of community issues and problems. The program director usually prepares this list. At one time, it had to be compiled by conducting many interviews with community leaders; now it merely requires the good-faith judgment of station management. Nonetheless, it must be thoughtfully and carefully prepared, and I’ve found it helpful to make it a number-ranked list of the top ten community concerns. This allows you to refer to the previous list and consider how certain concerns have risen or dropped in relative public importance.

This list must be updated every three months, and a copy of it should be given to the general manager and the news director and provided for the reference of the airstaff as well. That’s because, as mentioned in Chapter 6, the FCC requires that this list be the basis of public affairs programming during the three-month period during which it’s effective, and the station must be able to document that it has indeed addressed on the air at least some of these problems.

Public service announcements (PSAs) can be offered as a means of addressing at least some of these issues, but for them to count, each broadcast must be documented by date, time, and length. Therefore, these PSAs should be on the program log as if they were low-priority commercials so that an “invoice” is prepared and put in the public file to document their use.

Although the FCC now no longer requires any specific percentage or amount of public affairs programming—or of news programming, for that matter—it is very important to have some of each on your schedule to be able to prove to the FCC, if needed, that the station has operated in the community interest.

Specifically, public affairs programming consists of a documentary, or a program in which discussion of one or more issues of community significance takes place. The easiest way to handle public affairs programming is to have a weekly discussion program. As mentioned in Chapter 6, this is usually scheduled Sunday morning; this may seem cynical—a way to “bury” the program—but, in fact, I find that listeners usually seem most interested in listening to such programs then.

If your station has a weekly public affairs program, make sure that you provide a form that those who prepare (or run) the show must fill out and return to you to place in the Public Inspection File. The form should document the name of the show, the date it ran, the time it was scheduled, how long it lasted, who the participants were, and what issues were discussed. The community problems list should usually serve as the basis for selecting these topics, although of course any other topic of immediate interest not on that list may also be discussed—and documented for the file! (This includes interviews on deejay shows concerning any such issues, whether planned or spontaneous.)

The Public Inspection File must also include any letters received from the public that either criticize the station’s programming or make suggestions for programming, together with the station’s response—unless the writer specifically asks that the letter be kept private. In practice, all of the complimentary letters should usually be included, too, to avoid suggesting to readers of the file that you only get complaints.

The letters must be kept on file for only two years—the same length of time required for all station logs (except those relating to Emergency Broadcast System broadcasts and any that apply to an FCC inquiry, which must be retained indefinitely). However, practically speaking, there’s no reason not to keep the letters there as long as possible—and to keep the program and transmitter logs indefinitely, too—because these documents might be needed at the next license renewal to prove that the station has operated in a responsible fashion. If someone elects to challenge the station’s license at renewal time—seeking the license for themselves by making charges about how the station was operated—it really helps to have hard evidence to refute them.

By the way, at this writing, the FCC is in the process of making major changes in how radio is to alert the public emergencies in the future. Keep up-to-date on equipment and testing requirements because the Commission puts a high priority on having the correct equipment and on accurate and fast response in both test and emergency conditions. Make sure that your staff knows what to do when a disaster of some sort strikes; the station that responds with needed information in times of emergency not only makes points with the FCC but, more importantly, is long remembered gratefully by the public it serves. That’s a priceless benefit.

I should mention that the Public Inspection File must be kept at the station’s studio or business office—as long as it is located in the city of license or at the transmitter. When the studio or business office is located elsewhere, the matter becomes complicated. The FCC now allows the studio to be located anywhere within the “city grade contour” of the signal, which is the 5 millivolts per meter (mv/m) contour for AM stations and the 3.16 millivolts per meter (mv/m) contour for FM stations, but it wants the Public Inspection File available within the city of license.

If your station is located outside the city of license, check with your communications attorney about how to handle this. You may be advised to establish your Public Inspection File at a public library within the city of license, which would then require that you make regular pilgrimages there to keep the file up-to-date.

Many stations in this situation keep a duplicate file at the studio as well to cover all of the bases. If your station does this, make sure that both files are identical and that both are kept fully up to date.

Because people who ask to see your public file often have an agenda, frequently do not wish the station well, and usually are well aware of the FCC requirements, make sure that all office and on-air personnel know exactly how to handle such requests. (If the file is located in an institution in the city of license, those in charge of it there must clearly and unequivocally be aware of the requirements as well and agree in writing to follow them.)

Specifically, the Public Inspection File must be available to the public, without delay, anytime the station’s office (or the office of the institution where the file is kept) is normally open. It must not be locked away during these hours. Those seeking to look at it must be given full access to it and as much time as they need to see it, subject to normal office hours. If they want to make photocopies of anything in the file, they must be allowed to do so using any copier at the site—for which only a normal, competitive per-copy fee may be charged.

However, nobody looking at the file may remove things from it permanently. Therefore, when possible, I feel it is important to have some responsible station person accompany members of the public while they go through the file to make sure that nothing is stolen from it. (If someone were seeking to get the station into trouble, you see, they might steal documents from the file, then report to the FCC that these documents were missing. The station would be hard-pressed to explain why they weren’t there.)

Obscenity and Indecency

As the twentieth century ends, the issue of obscenity and indecency on the air has become more and more relevant for programmers. You must understand that the regulations applying to this issue are not a matter of FCC rules but are embodied in federal law, passed by Congress, signed by the President, and tested and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Furthermore, Congress has repeatedly put pressure on the FCC to enforce this law more decisively—under both Republican and Democratic majorities. Don’t take it lightly.

The essential point to understand about the federal law prohibiting “obscene or indecent speech, content, or meaning” is that for broadcasting, this means speech, content, or meaning independent of context. Such an interpretation may seem to you to be a violation of the First Amendment—and it would be for a nonbroadcast medium. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the government’s position that because broadcasting is regulated by the government and content is a legitimate criterion in selecting a licensee to use the public airwaves and in determining whether he or she has operated in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity,” this restriction to the First Amendment is constitutional as it applies to broadcasting.

In practice, the FCC enforces this law only when a documented complaint is received. The Commission thinks of this law as being somewhat self-regulating and believes that it makes little sense to offend your own listeners—and if they are not offended, they won’t complain, thus providing nothing for the Commission to act against. Of course, the problem is that sometimes only a handful of your listeners are offended, and it only takes one complaint to get the FCC involved. Big fines can result.

Use your common sense. Don’t program to offend any of your listeners; it really doesn’t make good sense for the station as a business, which is what a commercial radio station is. Be sure that your airstaff clearly understands where you draw the line. If one of your on-air people comes to you seeking approval for something that really straddles the line of taste and decency—and if you’d like to permit it—I strongly suggest that you run it by your general manager and let him or her have the final say. It is the manager’s job to represent the interests of the owner, and the owner’s interests are definitely at risk in a situation like this.

The purpose of this chapter has been to alert you to the reality that, as a program director, you do have specific responsibilities related to protecting the license and to give you some information to help you do it. I must now give the disclaimer that I am not an attorney, and the content of this chapter is simply based on my own experience as a program director, on conversations with FCC inspectors and office personnel, on discussions with communications attorneys and consulting engineers, and on my constant reading of these matters in the trade press. To do your job properly, you should keep up-to-date, through these same methods, on the latest FCC rules and their interpretations and enforcement.

When you ascertain what your responsibilities are concerning the specifics covered in this chapter, get your general manager’s permission to direct specific questions about current requirements and interpretations to the station’s communications attorney—or to an office of the FCC, if need be. Most general managers will appreciate your professionalism in seeking to take responsibility in programming-related areas for the preservation of the station’s license.