FCC Fines Cumulus $233,000 for Repeated Sponsorship ID Violations, Starks Wants It Higher

The FCC issued a $233,000 forfeiture against Cumulus and some subsidiaries for violating a 2016 consent decree by allegedly breaking FCC sponsorship ID rules, said an order Thursday. The FCC didn’t reduce the amount of the fine despite Cumulus’s arguments it should, but Commissioner Geoffrey Starks dissented from the order and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel concurred. Neither FCC Democrat provided a statement with the order, but Starks’ office said he dissented for the same reasons expressed in his dissent from the original August 2019 notice of apparent liability (see 1908060068). Starks, a former Enforcement Bureau staffer, said then the fine amount was too low, “does not follow well-established Commission precedent” and the "system only works if noncompliance with our consent decrees is strongly punished.” According to the NAL and forfeiture order, seven stations owned by Cumulus subsidiaries violated a 2016 consent decree 26 times by airing ads in 2017 and 2018 without proper sponsorship ID, and waiting eight months to report the violations, the NAL said. The consent decree required violations to be reported in 15 days. The 2016 consent decree was also for sponsorship ID violations, and was part of a $540,000 settlement between Cumulus and the FCC under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler. Cumulus argued the $233,000 forfeiture for the more recent ads is excessive, because it has gone through a bankruptcy and restructuring since the 2016 violations, and that as a large broadcaster the violations represent a small percentage of the ads it airs. The agency didn’t agree. “If a corporate entity chooses to acquire many stations, it must ensure that it scales up its compliance efforts accordingly,” the forfeiture order said. “The Respondent’s implication that it is a drastically different organization post-transfer is belied by the fact that its core senior management remained unchanged by the transfer of control,” the order said. The attorney who signed the consent decree is Richard Denning, who's still Cumulus general counsel, and the CEO remains Mary Berner, the order noted. “Our interest in ensuring compliance with consent decrees and deterring the recurrence of violations of the very same rule at issue supports the upward adjustment in this case,” the order said. Cumulus didn’t comment.