Spanish Broadcasting System has been handed a proposed fine from the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau for the apparent failure of one of its Los Angeles radio stations to deliver a prize to a contest winner in the prescribed time the FM said it would.
The proposed fine in the amount of $8,000 was handed on Friday by Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal to KXOL-FM “Mega 96.3” in L.A. for failing to conduct a contest in
accordance with its announced terms.
As such, Mega apparently violating the Federal Communications Commission’s Contest Rule, which requires that licensees fully and accurately disclose material contest terms and conduct contests substantially as announced and advertised.
In the case of KXOL, a listener filed a complaint with the FCC after winning a “Mega Bomba” contest on October 24, 2019. The prize: $396. The winner participated in the second-to-final day of the content, which began on July 18, 2019 and ended on October 25, 2019. Some 459 winners were declared.
In two separate provisions, the “Mega Bomba” rules state that each winner will be awarded their prize “within thirty (30) business days of the date the winner completes all required Station documents.”
That didn’t happen here. All of the documents were completed on January 16, 2020. This meant that issuance of the prize was due on March 2, 2020. However, the $396 prize was not delivered until May 2021.
At SBS’s KXOL and regional Mexican sibling KLAX-FM “La Raza,” a management change had transpired just as the COVID-19 pandemic was set to paralyze Southern California by St. Patrick’s Day 2020. Rachel Elster took over as VP/GM of SBS’s Los Angeles stations, and a work-from-home protocol was put in place. This, says SBS, created an “undue delay” in awarding the prize.
First, SBS says it was still processing payments when Elster came on board and the pandemic started, leaving staff unable to access the necessary files while working from home.
Second, SBS placed further delays on a ransomware attack that disabled corporate IT systems. Yet, this transpired between October 2020 and March 2021 — more than one year after the listener won the prize.
Then, SBS told the Enforcement Bureau that after recovering from the ransomware attack, it lacked the staff needed to complete the remaining work quickly.
None of those reasons swayed Egal. “Each event the licensee identifies as causing its delay began after March 2, 2020, and thus after the prize was already overdue—including the licensee’s transition to work-from-home in ‘Mid-March 2020’ caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Egal wrote. “Likewise, the ransomware attack and subsequent staff shortage began after delivery of the prize was already overdue.”
SBS now has 30 days to request a cancellation or reduction of the fine, or pay up.
