Three More Stations Face FCC Fines
Violation of Rules Covering Advertising During Kids’ Shows Snag WIWB Suring, Wis.; WKBD TV Detroit; KIDU-LP Brownwood, Texas
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 5/27/2008 8:26:00 AM
Pokemon took a $14,000 poke at ACME Communications’ WIWB Suring, Wis., and Donald Duck came back to bite Viacom's WKBD TV Detroit to the tune of $8,000, but the biggest hit is against a low-power station, which the Federal Communications Commission is proposing fining $20,000 for a multitude of transgressions.
The $14,000 fine against WIWB the FCC proposed Tuesday was for twice exceeding the FCC's limits on ads during kids’ TV shows -- 10.5 minutes on weekends, 12 minutes on weekdays One overage was 90 seconds and the other was the now-famous fleeting appearance of a Pokemon character in an ad during the Pokemon show on The WB back when there was a WB (in 2002).
The FCC considers that host-selling, even though the appearance was for only one second and was only a partial image on a Pokemon game card in an ad for the Gameboy Advance E-Reader. That fleeting appearance, the agency said, still essentially converts the whole TV show into an ad. The station blamed both overages on The WB, but the FCC doesn't take human error as a defense.
As for Viacom's Detroit station, the fine also involves fleeting characters and host-selling. The FCC's proposed $8,000 fine involves Donald Duck's appearance in two shows in the late 1990s.
In filing its license-renewal application, Viacom conceded that it aired a two-second still image of Donald Duck in an ad that appeared during two shows, Ducktails and Quack Pack, in which Donald Duck also appeared as a character. The station also failed to file all of the requisite records about its compliance -- or, in this case, noncompliance -- with limits on advertising during kids’ shows.
The station was also cited for not keeping its issues/program lists up to date, which is a public filing of the community issues the station has addressed during the previous license term.
But the biggest fine came against the smallest station, Sage Broadcasting's KIDU-LP Brownwood, Texas, one of an increasing number of low-power stations lately cited for violations by the FCC.
Its $20,000 fine resulted from numerous violations of the ad limits during kids’ shows, a failure to put information on its kids' shows in its public files and incomplete issues reports.
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