iHeartMedia 2000 Annual Report Download - page 22

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an affirmative finding only in limited circumstances. Since we serve as a holding company for
subsidiaries that serve as licensees for our stations, we are effectively restricted from having more than
one-fourth of our stock owned or voted directly or indirectly by non-U.S. citizens or their representatives,
foreign governments, representatives of non-foreign governments, or foreign corporations.
Other Regulations Affecting Broadcast Stations
General. The FCC has significantly reduced its past regulation of broadcast stations, including
elimination of formal ascertainment requirements and guidelines concerning amounts of certain types of
programming and commercial matter that may be broadcast. There are, however, FCC rules and policies,
and rules and policies of other federal agencies, that regulate matters such as network-affiliate relations,
the ability of stations to obtain exclusive rights to air syndicated programming, cable and satellite
systems’ carriage of syndicated and network programming on distant stations, political advertising
practices, application procedures and other areas affecting the business or operations of broadcast
stations.
Public Interest Programming. Broadcasters are required to air programming addressing the
needs and interests of their communities of license, and to place “issues/programs lists” in their public
inspection files to provide their communities with information on the level of “public interest”
programming they air. In October 2000, the FCC commenced a proceeding seeking comment on whether
it should adopt a standardized form for reporting information on a station’ s public interest programming
and whether it should require television broadcasters to post the new form – as well as all other
documents in their public inspection files – either on station websites or the websites of state
broadcasters’ associations.
Children’s Television Programming. The FCC has adopted rules to implement the Children’ s
Television Act of 1990, which, among other provisions, limits the permissible amount of commercial
matter in children’ s programs and requires each television station to present “educational and
informational” children’ s programming. The FCC also has adopted renewal processing guidelines
effectively requiring television stations to broadcast an average of three hours per week of children’ s
educational programming.
Closed Captioning/Video Description. The FCC has adopted rules requiring closed captioning of
broadcast television programming. By January 1, 2006, subject to certain exceptions, television
broadcasters must provide closed captioning for 100% of their programming.
Television Violence. The 1996 Act contains a number of provisions relating to television
violence. First, pursuant to the 1996 Act, the television industry has developed a ratings system which
the FCC has approved. In addition, the 1996 Act requires that all television license renewal applications
contain summaries of written comments and suggestions received by the station from the public regarding
violent programming.
Equal Employment Opportunity. In April 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
concluded that the affirmative action requirements of the FCC’ s Equal Employment Opportunity (“EEO”)
regulations were unconstitutional. The FCC responded to the court’ s ruling in September 1998 by
suspending certain reporting requirements and commencing a proceeding to consider new rules that
would not be subject to the court’ s constitutional objections. In January 2000, the FCC adopted new EEO
rules, which (1) required broadcast licensees to widely disseminate information about job openings to all
segments of the community; (2) gave broadcasters the choice of implementing two FCC-suggested
supplemental recruitment measures or, alternatively, designing their own broad recruitment/outreach
programs; and (3) imposed significant reporting requirements concerning broadcasters’ recruitment