Which TV licensees have to file?

Recently, the Minority Media & Telecom Council asked the FCC to suspend enforcement of the EEO rules for three months. (You can read MMTC’s request here; alternatively, you can read our monthly Memo to Clients summary of the request here.) At this point, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether the FCC will grant MMTC’s request – although, frankly, if even MMTC is asking that EEO enforcement be suspended, the Commission really should be wondering what’s wrong with this picture.

But regardless of what the Commission eventually does, it might want to take this opportunity to clean up at least one aspect of its EEO “Broadcast Mid-Term Report” (FCC Form 397) that seems oddly and unnecessarily confusing, if not flat-out inconsistent.

Form 397 is a cute little three-page form. The first page calls on the reporting licensee to provide its name and contact information and identify the stations covered by the report. No real surprises there.

But on page two, Section I consists of the following single yes/no question:

Does your station employment unit employ fewer than five full-time employees, if television, or fewer than eleven full-time employees, if radio?

Not an overly complicated question. Then the form reads:

If yes, you do not have to file this form with the FCC. However, you have the option to complete the certification below, return the form to the FCC, and place a copy in your station(s) public file.

This last instruction raises an obvious question – i.e., who in his right mind would “opt” to file a form that the FCC specifically says does not have to be filed? – but that’s not the problem. Rather, the problem arises from the fact that the “filing instructions” located immediately above Section I include the following:

If a television station employment unit employs fewer than five full-time employees, only the first two pages of this report need be filed.

So does that mean that TV stations with fewer than five have to file a report (even if the report is limited to only two pages), or does it not have to file anything at all (unless, of course, it opts to)?

Oh, and did we mention that the underlying rule (47 C.F.R. §73.2080(f)(2)) provides that

The Commission will conduct a mid-term review of the employment practices of each broadcast television station and each radio station that is part of an employment unit of more than ten full-time employees four years following the station’s most recent license expiration date as specified in §73.1020.

Let’s get this straight. If you’re a TV licensee with fewer than five full-timers, according to Form 397 either “you do not have to file this form” or “only the first two pages of this report need be filed”. Huh? And Section 73.2080(f)(2) isn’t much help in sorting this out, since that section could be read to say that mid-term reports are expected from TV stations with more than ten FT employees – even though the 2002 Report and Order adopting the rules makes reasonably clear (check out Paragraph 153) that the Commission intended to limit mid-term EEO reviews to TV stations with five or more FT employees.

There is at least one possible way (see “Suggested Solution”, below) to twist this regulatory Rubik’s cube to make all the seemingly incongruous parts look consistent, but really, would it be that hard for the FCC to take the time to articulate its requirements clearly and consistently in the first place? Sure, we know that the number of TV stations with fewer than five full-time employees may be limited, but is that any excuse for at-best-ambiguous-at-worst-hopelessly-inconsistent forms?

[Suggested Solution:

Step 1: Understand that Section 73.2080(f)(2)’s clause reading “that is part of an employment unit of more than ten full-time employees” refers only to the term “each radio station”, and not to “each broadcast television station”.  That reading is not absolutely dictated by the grammatical structure of the particular sentence in question, but it’s also not clearly foreclosed by it.

Step 2: Since “television station” in Section 73.2080(f)(2) is not modified by the “more than ten” clause (see Step 1), refer back to the prefatory language of Section 73.2080(f). That language limits the reach of that section (including its subsections, such as 73.2080(f)(2)) to employment units with “five or more persons in full-time positions, except where noted”. Thus, the term “television station” as it appears in 73.2080(f)(2) can be read to be limited to TV stations with five or more full-timers. That assumes, of course, that the “except where noted” phrase in the preface is intended to refer to – and except out – the “more than ten” clause in (f)(2). Again, that assumption is not absolutely dictated by the rules’s language, but it’s also not clearly foreclosed by it. 

Step 3:   Assume that the FCC really means it when it says (in Section I of Form 397) that TV licensees with fewer than five FT employees “do not have to file this form with the FCC”.

Step 4: Assume that, when the form’s instructions say that “only the first two pages of this report need be filed” by TV licensees with fewer than five FT employees, it really means that those pages need be filed only if the licensee chooses to go ahead and file a report even though it doesn’t have to.

End result: TV employment units with fewer than five full-time employees need not file any mid-term EEO reports.]