Industry News

FCC Fines Cumulus $26k for EEO Report Violations

The FCC knocked $6,000 off the forfeiture amount for Cumulus Media’s failure to post its EEO public file report for the Albany, Georgia cluster in a timely manner and fines the company $26,000. Cumulus asked for a reconsideration of the Notice of Apparent Liability arguing that it completed the EEO report but admitted to failing to upload it to its station websites on time. But the FCC concluded, “[C]ompilingim the Annual Report alone, without also uploading it to its intended destination in a timely manner, here more than nine months late, may, in certain circumstances, constitute (and here does constitute) a violation of the requirements to analyze the Stations’ EEO program. The length of time during which Cumulus failed to upload its Annual Report is persuasive evidence that Cumulus did not ‘routinely analyze the adequacy of their various EEO program elements in achieving broad outreach to all segments of the community’ and address any problems found as a result of such analysis… Consequently, given the specific circumstances of this case, we reject Cumulus’s argument that any self-evaluation it did in fact undertake was adequate and satisfied the self-assessment rule.”