Media Bureau announces opening of 2011 Ownership Report season, but leaves out some information that many might find useful

The Media Bureau has reminded commercial broadcasters that their biennial Ownership Reports (Form 323) are due to be filed by December 1, 2011 – and that the opportunity to start filing them opens up October 1, 2011.

But the Bureau’s public notice doesn’t mention some information we kind of hoped they might, since we reminded them of it just a couple of weeks ago. Seeing as how the Commission seems less than clear about what it told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit just last year, let us help out here.

The question: Is it really true that anybody and everybody with any attributable interest in a reporting licensee must be identified, in the report, by a Social Security Number-based FCC Registration Number?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No, individuals with attributable interests may submit a non-SSN-based FRN – dubbed a “Special Use FRN” (we refer to it as a SUFRN) – under some circumstances. Just what those circumstances are remains a bit fuzzy, since the latest public notice fails to mention an important exchange between the Commission and the D.C. Circuit which shed considerable light on this very point.

First, a brief intro to the SUFRN.  The SUFRN option is not reflected in the instructions to Form 323 or in the form itself . . . BUT, if you get deep into completing the form, you get to the FRN question, which simply requires you to insert an FRN for each attributable interest holder. Immediately under the blank where you’re supposed to insert that FRN, the form reads: “If Respondent is unable to provide an FRN for an individual attributable interest holder reported in this listing, press above button”.

And sure enough, there’s a button labeled “Special Use FRN”. If you push that button, you get a pop-up message that instructs that you don’t need to use an SSN-based FRN. However, according to the pop-up message, eligibility to use a SUFRN arises only “if, after diligent and good faith efforts, Respondent is unable to obtain, and/or does not have permission to use, a Social Security Number in order to generate an FRN for any specific individual whose FRN must be reported on Form 323.”

The pop-up message thus limits use of an SUFRN to situations in which the respondent has made “diligent and good faith efforts” to obtain SSN-based FRNs but has been “unable to obtain, and/or does not have permission to use” such FRNs.

Omitted from the form, the pop-up message, and the FAQs found on the Bureau’s website dedicated to All Things Form 323 is the fact that respondents “are not required to provide SSN-based FRNs . . . if they object to the submission of their Social Security Numbers.” Nor does the Bureau acknowledge that “no individual attributable interest holder will be required to submit Social Security number to obtain an FRN” in order to respond to Form 323. 

But that’s precisely what the Commission and the D.C. Circuit worked out in June-July, 2010.

There’s a fair amount of backstory here. You can catch up with it by reading this series of posts chronicling L’Affaire Form 323 from 2009-2010. You can also read the Emergency Petition we filed with the Commission on September 14, 2011.   If you don’t feel like reading the entire history of the matter – entertaining though it may be – and would prefer to cut to the chase, here are direct links to the FCC’s pleading to the Court and the Court’s response.

The bottom line is that, with respect to use of SUFRNs, the Commission made a very specific representation to the Court and the Court expressly relied on that representation. According to the FCC, respondents “are not required to provide SSN-based FRNs . . . if they object to the submission of their Social Security Numbers.” And according to the Court, “no individual attributable interest holder will be required to submit Social Security number to obtain an FRN” in order to respond to Form 323.

We think that all Form 323 filers are entitled to know that. For some reason, the Commission seems unenthusiastic about that prospect.

As we read all this, inability to obtain an SSN-based FRN – which is what Form 323 suggests is a prerequisite to hitting the SUFRN button in the first place – appears to be immaterial. Ditto for making “diligent and good faith efforts” to get hold of SSN-based FRNs – a duty imposed by the pop-up message when you hit the “Special Use FRN” button. The Commission appears to have told the Court in no uncertain terms that no individual attributable interest holder has to file an SSN-based FRN is he/she objects to doing so. Period.  If the Commission disagrees with our interpretation, it might want to say so.

Another, less prominent, aspect of the SSN-based FRN question involves changes made to the form back in December, 2009, which have since been quietly tweaked. In December, 2009, the SUFRN pop-up message (as well as a public notice issued on December 4, 2009) insisted that reliance on a SUFRN for purposes of getting an Ownership Report on file by the then-operative deadline was only an interim measure. Respondents remained under an “ultimate duty to obtain a fully compliant FRN” for all folks identified in Form 323. According to the December 4, 2009 public notice, the Commission expected all filers relying on SUFRNs to “update their filed ownership reports with fully compliant FRNs when these are obtained.”

The language about some “ultimate duty” to update after the fact was deleted from the pop-up message by the Commission in March, 2010.  You may not have noticed that, since the deletion was effected without explanation or public notice from the Commission. The FCC did ask OMB for permission for the deletion, but in so doing merely characterized the change as “non-substantive”, without offering any rationale. Since the Commission didn’t bother to tell anybody about this change, much less explain it, there was no reason to believe that the concept of some continuing “ultimate duty” did not remain in place.

We mentioned this in our Emergency Petition, and the Commission appears to have taken our comments on this point to heart . . . sort of. On September 28, 2011 – that would be just a couple of weeks after we filed the Emergency Petition, and a mere three days before the form was to go “live” for the 2011 biennial filings – the Commission quietly asked OMB to authorize yet another tweak to the language in the pop-up message, and OMB obliged. Now, stuck on at the end of the pop-up message is the following sentence: “The guidance provided on Special Use FRNs in the Media Bureau’s December 4, 2009 Public Notice (DA 09-2539) has been superseded as discussed herein.”

“As discussed herein”? The problem is that there is no obvious discussion in the pop-up message (or on the FCC’s website) referring back to the December, 2009 public notice, so anyone reading that newly-added sentence wlll be hard-pressed to know what it’s supposed to mean. Our guess is that the Commission is backing away from the notion of some “ultimate duty” to follow-up with SSN-based FRNs for everybody, but the Commission sure hasn’t said that expressly. By contrast, the Commission was very explicit in imposing that duty back in December, 2009 – so if it wants now to countermand that earlier instruction, you’d think that the Commission could do so with similar clarity.

Unfortunately, the Commission appears still to be trying to shore up the multiple weaknesses in its Form 323 in a piecemeal, less-than-public way. The history of Form 323 since 2009 has not been a particularly happy one, and the most recent developments don’t suggest much improvement. With the filing window opening on October 1, the Commission has apparently not focused on problems with the form that were identified, and should have been fixed, more than a year ago. The last-minute addition of unilluminating language in the pop-up message does not suggest that the Commission has taken the time to think through the form carefully. Indeed, the manner in which that last-minute addition was submitted to OMB suggests less than careful and thoughtful preparation:

(This is a screen grab, taken from the OMB website, of a portion of the request for OMB approval submitted by the FCC on September 28, 2011.)

Maybe we’re missing something here, but a hand-written change to a form which is supposed to go “live” within a couple of days doesn’t suggest that the folks in charge of that form have the best handle on it. That’s too bad, since it’s a form that all commercial broadcasters are required to file. We had hoped that the efforts we made in 2009-2010 would have assisted the Commission to get its Form 323 act together by now. We may just have to keep trying.