NAB Intervenes on Cumulus NAL

The FCC should “rethink” assessing forfeitures against broadcasters for “simple administrative errors,” said NAB in comments posted Tuesday on a $32,000 notice of apparent liability the FCC issued against Cumulus over equal employment opportunity filing violations at stations Cumulus has since sold. Cumulus didn’t upload a 2018 EEO report to public file for nearly a year past the due date because of an administrative “oversight” and an employee leaving the company, said the Cumulus NAL. “Inadvertent mistakes, especially those that do not trigger complaints and produce no cognizable harm, should not lead to monetary penalties,” NAB said. It doesn’t usually intervene in enforcement actions against individual broadcasters, but a broadcast industry official told us NAB is looking at intervening more often. The NAL “elevates ministerial compliance over substance, unfairly penalizing Cumulus for understandable and inevitable human error,” NAB said. If the FCC goes forward with a monetary forfeiture, it shouldn't adjust the amount upward due to Cumulus’s prior filing violations, it said: “Many of the prior violations cited by the NAL occurred prior to a 2018 transfer of control of Cumulus, and the Commission even relies on unrelated actions from 2003 to justify its proposed forfeiture.”