The FCC fined Spanish Broadcasting Systems $25,000 for recording two phone calls for broadcast without alerting the people on the other end of the phone first, a forfeiture order said (http://xrl.us/bnms94). The fine resulted from a complaint the commission received over SBS’s prank phone call segment on WZNT(FM) San Juan, Puerto Rico, called “You Fell For It,” the order said. The Enforcement Bureau proposed the fine in a notice of apparent liability last year. SBS asked for the fine to be canceled, but the bureau found sufficient evidence of rule violations to merit it, the order said.
The SEC approved a disclosure rule under the Dodd-Frank law that requires publicly traded companies to disclose when their goods contain “conflict minerals” from the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country. The rule applies to four “conflict minerals” -- the elements tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold -- that are used in products including cellphones, missiles and automobiles. Under the rule, a company that uses any of the designated minerals is required to conduct a reasonable “country of origin” inquiry to determine whether any of its minerals originated in the covered countries or are from scrap or recycled sources, according to the rule. The company must make the results of the inquiry available on its website, the SEC said.
The FCC found CBS’s WBAV(FM) Gastonia, N.C., apparently liable for $10,000 for failing to run its “Carolina Cuties” on-air contest in accordance with agency rules, an Enforcement Bureau notice of apparent liability said (http://xrl.us/bnms9b). The bureau began its investigation after receiving a complaint from an entrant in the contest who was allegedly given misleading information about the contest’s final voting deadline in e-mails on the station’s website, the notice said. “Although CBS’s on air announcements technically covered the Contest’s material terms ... the Station’s website and e-mail announcements conflicted with its broadcast announcements, thus confusing and misleading the public."
Charlevoix County, Mich., is the first certified county of a connected community engagement program, Connected Nation said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnms8r). It said the program “supports the building of a comprehensive action plan for a connected community by reviewing the technology landscape, developing regional partnerships, establishing local teams, and conducting a thorough community assessment of broadband access, adoption, and use.”
House lawmakers said they were concerned about reports that some companies were targeting children with viral online marketing campaigns, in a joint statement Wednesday. The co-chairs of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, urged Congress to update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to account for changes in social media and other Web developments since the law was enacted in 1998. They referenced a recent FTC complaint filed by the Center for Digital Democracy that claimed companies like McDonald’s, Viacom, TBS and General Mills engaged in viral marketing campaigns targeted at children (http://xrl.us/bnms7o). “Children and teens are especially vulnerable to targeted advertising due to their use of social media tools, making it important to update COPPA for the 21st century,” Markey said. The FTC did not comment and is still considering comments to the COPPA changes it proposed last September.
The FCC should not renew the licenses for News Corp.’s WTTG-TV Washington, WDCA-TV Washington and WUTB-TV Baltimore, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in a petition filed with the FCC this week (http://xrl.us/bnms7d). News Corp. and Chairman Rupert Murdoch “have committed egregious violations of law ... that include illicit payments by News Corp. employees to British public officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, lying under oath, and allegations that News Corp. hacked into voicemails of 9/11 victims that currently are subject of a criminal investigation in the United States,” the petition said. A News Corp. spokesman declined to comment. “Though these crimes were not directly broadcast related, individuals in News Corp.’s chain of responsibility were involved in the misconduct and their behavior related directly to their roles as members of the news media,” the petition said. The petition called for an FCC hearing on the issue.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 827 praised the Justice Department’s conditional approval of a spectrum deal among Verizon, Comcast and other cable companies, the local said Wednesday. The union’s input over the past eight months “appears to have had a material impact on the outcome of the review process by contesting the deal as originally proposed by Verizon,” the union said. It cited how negotiations in recent months “substantially changed the deal Verizon and Comcast originally crafted by limiting many of the anti-consumer aspects the union had identified during the review process.” In light of this decision, “Verizon should settle the contract [under negotiation and of which there’s ‘long overdue’ settlement] and let us get back to what we do best, maintaining New Jersey’s copper wire based infrastructure and completing the build out and installation of the FiOS system that was promised to consumers through Opportunity New Jersey,” Local 827 President William Huber said in a statement. Local 827 represents about 5,000 telecom workers in New Jersey.
The FTC has raised the fees telemarketers must pay to access phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. The new fees will take effect Oct. 1 under requirements passed in 2007, the FTC said Wednesday. Starting Oct. 1, telemarketers will pay $58 -- a $2 increase -- to access the registry list for a single area code. The price for all listings nationwide totals $15,962, the FTC said. Telemarketers will pay $29 per area code to access listings during the second half of the yearlong subscription period. Consumers will remain able to register phone numbers on the list for free, according to the FTC. Telemarketers are required to subscribe to the list in order to ensure they do not call registered numbers. Companies get free listings for five area codes, while organizations exempted under Do Not Call rules get all listings free (http://xrl.us/bnms65).
The Sunlight Foundation introduced a new smartphone app that identifies the audio from political TV ads and delivers information to the phone about who paid for the ad. The Ad Hawk app for iOS and Android devices uses audio fingerprinting technology from Echoprint to identify the spots, the foundation said. If the system recognizes an ad, it will deliver information about “how much money the ad’s sponsor received or spent, where the ad is on the air and media reports about the candidate or political group” behind it, the foundation said. The foundation said it’s scouring YouTube for the ads, then pairing them with FCC information on ad spending, Federal Election Commission information on fundraising and press releases and news reports. When someone uses the app to identify an ad, the app collects anonymized location data, if users authorize it to, which the foundation plans to use to create ad spending maps, it said.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau reminded private land mobile radio licensees using the 150-174 MHz and 421-470 MHz bands that they need to move from wideband to narrowband technology by the commission’s Jan. 1 deadline. The notice came in an advisory posted Wednesday on the FCC website (http://xrl.us/bnms6c).