FCC has 'no Support' on RUFRN Rules, Say NCE Stations
The FCC has “no support, anywhere” for requiring board members of noncommercial education stations to submit Social Security numbers to be assigned restricted-use FCC registration numbers, said numerous NCE stations in replies supporting their petitions for reconsideration (see 1605040056) of the new RUFRN rules. No comments supporting the rules have been filed, the stations said. The record in docket 10-234 contains “considerable evidence” that the RUFRN rules will harm NCE stations by discouraging donors and participation on their boards, said PBS, CPB, NPR and America’s Public Television Stations in joint reply comments.
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The NCE groups argued lumping in such stations with commercial stations in rules for RUFRNs will distort the demographic data the FCC is trying to collect, along with applying rules designed for commercial stations to nonprofit stations with very different management structures. The “risk of the University’s future leadership being unwilling to risk their private information (where even the last four digits of a social security number can lead to stolen identity and fraud), the skewing of data when combining commercial and non-commercial data, and the potential violation of the Privacy Act in requiring such data” should move the FCC to reconsider including NCE stations in the rules, said State University of New York, licensee of numerous radio stations.
Though the RUFRN rules are intended to allow the FCC to better collect broadcast ownership demographic data, the recent 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on the FCC quadrennial review shows the 3rd Circuit is interested in ownership data only for commercial stations, said Gray Miller attorney Todd Gray, who represents a group of NCE stations. He spoke in an interview. The bureau didn't comment.
Gray is concerned the commission may have included NCE stations in the RUFRN rules to make broadcast ownership look more diverse, since the noncommercial sphere has more diverse ownership than commercial stations. The lack of pushback against the NCE reconsideration petitions outside the FCC is significant, Gray said. The public interest groups that pursued the FCC in court to improve ownership diversity don’t disagree with the NCE stations or don’t care if noncommercial stations are excepted, he said.