Audacy is facing a $14,000 proposed penalty from the Federal Communications Commission for failing to select or notify contest winners in a timely way in a nationwide promotion that ran on many of its stations in 2021.
The FCC proposed the forfeiture in a Notice of Apparent Liability on Friday. It stems from a nationwide $1,000 hourly cash contest the media company ran involving 194 of its stations, including some in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Every hour — totaling 11 times a day between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. local time — participating stations announced a contest keyword, according to the FCC summary. Listeners could then text the keyword to a specified five-digit number or via a website set up for the contest. One national $1,000 winner was to be selected amongst each hour’s entrees.
According to listed rules, 297 winners should have been selected over the course of the contest, which ran weekdays from March 11 through April 16.
During the run of the contest, on March 30, 2021, Audacy announced its name change from Entercom.
In its official rules, Entercom/Audacy stated that winners would be notified within 72 hours of selection, assuming proper verification of the winner. The $1,000 prize would then be mailed out within eight to 12 weeks.
The commission’s contest regulations, which apply to all broadcasters, require that stations accurately disclose contest terms and conduct contests as announced or advertised. However, the Enforcement Bureau received a complaint that April and sent a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) in August 2021.
Audacy in its reply told the commission that it had conducted a post-contest internal audit and that a part-time employee who had been designated to select winners did not do so in some instances.
A May 2021 Entercom/Audacy job posting seeking a part-time National Cash Contest Coordinator described the role as “selecting and contacting hourly winners, capturing audio and distributing to stations.”
The company said the employee’s manager did not provide the “proper oversight” to ensure winners were selected in a timely manner. As a result, some winners were never notified of their prize.
In total, Audacy admitted that it failed to select or notify 50 winners out of the possible 297 slots in a timely manner.
In October and November of 2021, Audacy said it selected and notified potential replacement winners for all 297 slots of the contest. In its response to the FCC, the company argued that the volume of selection failures was “insubstantial” in the scope of the contest, and that the contest rules allowed some leeway by stating “a total of up to, but not more than” 297 winners. It also placed the omissions on the “poor performance” of its two employees.
Now, in its notice of liability, the Enforcement Bureau says these arguments were “not persuasive.” The bureau found the percentage of non-selections in the contest to be substantial, based on the company’s own contest terms. It also said Audacy’s remedial efforts, coming after the commission’s initial inquiry, did not mitigate its liability. The FCC added that the company “cannot escape liability merely because the misconduct arose from its employees’ poor performance.”
The commission proposed a forfeiture of $14,000 to Audacy. The company has 30 days to pay the fine or file a statement seeking reduction or cancellation.
