By now all radio and TV licensees with "station employment units" (SEUs) having five or more full-time employees should be in the habit of preparing the annual EEO report that must be placed in the station’s local public inspection file each year on the anniversary of the due date for their renewal application. Those annual reports are also required to be posted on the station’s website, IF the station has a website. Ditto for FCC Form 397, the mid-term EEO report required of TV SEUs with five or more full-timers and radio SEUs with 11 or more full-timers at the mid-point of their license terms.
One of the miracles of the Internet, of course, is the fact that pretty much anything that’s posted there can be viewed by pretty much anybody pretty much anywhere. So it should come as no surprise that we have heard that FCC staffers – sitting in the comfort of their government-issued chairs in beautiful Washington, D.C. (our nation’s capital) – have been checking station websites across the country to see whether those websites include FCC Form 397 like they’re supposed to.
So far we have not heard of any fines being issued for any apparent violations detected through this remote investigation technique, but it’s probably just a matter of time. You have been warned.
