Check the wrong box on your FCC license renewal application and it could cost you big bucks.
The latest in a recent string of fines concerning management of public inspection files has Access.1 being fined $10,000; but the owner also won renewal of its license for WWRL(AM) in New York.
The FCC Media Bureau fined it for falsely certifying in its application that the public inspection file was complete throughout the license term.
The case dates to a 2005 visit by an FCC agent and a subsequent filing for renewal. In issuing the fine, the commission said the licensee had falsely certified compliance with the public inspection file rule. The commission found nothing to indicate an intent to mislead it, but that doesn’t save the station from a fine, because the rules define “willful” as “the conscious and deliberate commission or omission of [any] act, irrespective of any intent to violate” the law, the FCC explained.
But it said it reduced what could have been a $32,500 fine given the circumstances.
