Law Firm Asks FCC To Delay Ownership Filing Date

On behalf of itself as well as station and broadcast group clients, law firm Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth has asked the Federal Communications Commission to stay the Dec. 15, 2009, deadline for station owners, which in most cases means their lawyers, to file biennial ownership reports (form 323). The FCC has changed the form -- the firm calls it an "unexpected revision...inappropriately adopted" -- to require information from anyone with an attributable interest in a station rather than just the principal entity. That, says the law firm, means vastly increasing the number of parties, including individuals, who have to supply personally identifiable information, including social security numbers, to the commission, raising "serious privacy concerns." The request for a stay or delay of the deadline also takes issue with the way the FCC chose to change the form, which was not through a notice and comment proceeding, but through an "unexpected" revision in the form without notice, says the firm.