Significant Treatment: An Assessment of Issues-Programs List Availability in Missouri Radio Station Public Inspection Files

Abstract

Over the past three decades, rising competition from television and other new media prompted the FCC to ease the responsibilities of radio stations to maintain extensive records of issues programming, while retaining the responsibility of stations to provide ready public access to records. This study investigated the availability of Issues-Programs Lists in nearly 100 Missouri radio station Public Files. One in five randomly sampled stations failed to produce access to Lists upon demand as required under federal law. Noncompliance themes include: Inability to access Public Files within 20 minutes of face-to-face requests; station personnel with limited or no knowledge of Files; denial of access to Files and Lists (i.e., verbal refusals, locked studio doors); and incomplete Files. The rate of noncompliance leads the researchers to urge greater efforts among Missouri broadcasters to be aware of and to train station personnel properly to respond to File requests.

Notes

¹By fall 2006, no state broadcast associations had posted formal comments supporting a petition file by Tillotson with the FCC. Individual broadcasters and members of the public had filed more than 30 comments. The Adventist Radio Broadcasters Association, which supports elimination of formal record keeping, suggests “it is obvious the public does not find it necessary to keep abreast of station activities by way of visits to review the public file” (Adventist Radio Broadcasters' Association, 2006).

²The 1981 Report and Order also eliminated commercial time limitations and the need to maintain daily program logs.

³In addition to Issues-Programs Lists, a radio licensee must include other documents in the Public Inspection File: A copy of The Public and Broadcasting; the station authorization to operate a broadcast facility; FCC application material; citizen agreements; a contour map; ownership reports; political records concerning candidates for public office who use the facilities; Equal Employment Opportunity documentation; letters from the public; material related to FCC complaints and investigations; local public notice announcements regarding license renewals; time brokerage agreements; and joint sales agreements.

⁴Radio stations must maintain quarterly Issues-Programs Lists through the license period: “The lists described…shall be retained in the public inspection file until final action has been taken on the station's next license renewal application” (Title 47, §73.3526 (e)(12), p. 349).

⁵In a similar incident, as a field researcher departed a small market station in north central Missouri with copies of the requested List, the lone employee staffing the studio, an announcer, remarked: “It was a good thing you came this week—I'm gone next week on vacation—the front door [to the studio] will be locked [during business hours].”

⁶The penciled cover page stated: “[XXXX] FM ran spots to promote the AM talk station's ‘local issues’ segment as shown on the calendar sheets as ‘AM promo.’ These were run 1 per day each day.” At another licensed facility, after the researcher requested the target list, the receptionist of a southeast Missouri group owned station called the business office of a sister station in Arkansas and was informed that she was not to allow copies of the List out of the station. When the researcher responded that FCC regulations required that copies be made available, the receptionist called the Station Manager who requested that the researcher wait until he could return to the station “in just a few minutes.” The researcher waited until his arrival. The Manager went into the air booth and obtained a log of topics from the station's 20-minute morning call-in program. The List was handwritten with dates and single words or short phrases for topics or the nature of the coverage of the issues. Several days' topics were recorded as “Hurricane” or “Politics” for the Issues. In addition, the pages for October were missing. This documentation had clearly not been filed by January 10th in the Public File; the visit was made in June. The researcher waited 45 minutes to receive copies of the pages with a brief cover letter expressing thanks for taking an interest in the station. Regardless of the sparse and missing content of the File, the time to comply exceeded that of the study parameters, so the station was categorized as noncompliant.

⁷At press time, the FCC is considering whether broadcasters should post Public File contents online. Examples of Issues-Programs List web postings can be retrieved from KTRM (FM), licensed to Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri: ktrm.truman.edu/calendar.php