The FCC is proposing a $20,000 fine against iHeartMedia Classic Rock “Big 105.9” WBGG-FM Fort Lauderdale/Miami for contest rule violations.
The FCC received a complaint following WBGG-FM’s “You Can’t Win” contest in May 30, 2019. The complainant had won a previous contest on March 1, 2019 and staffers applied a 90 day lockout of prior winners even though the contest’s written rules only excluded people who had won in the past 30 days.
In a response to the FCC’s inquiry, iHeartMedia admitted that “as a result of human error, it appears that the Station did not conduct a contest in strict compliance with the written rules for that contest” due to an employee applying the incorrect past winner eligibility exclusion. iHeart also admitted that it failed to maintain the contest’s rules on its website for at least 30 days after the end of the contest. iHeart did state that the complainant would still have been ineligible to win as its contest rules excludes any person who wins another prize at any time while the contest is ongoing and since the “You Can’t Win” started on January 7, 2019 so any individual who won another contest conducted by the Station on or after December 8, 2018 was ineligible to win that contest. Since he won a “Southwest Flyaway Fridays” on March 1, he was still deemed ineligible.
In proposing the fine, the FCC finds that iHeartMedia failed to conduct its contest “fairly and substantially as represented to the public.” The FCC states that precedent makes clear that ambiguous rules are to be construed against the interests of the promoter of the contest so because the company’s screeners are trained to ask contestants whether they won in the past 90 days and not since the start of the contest in question the ambiguity should’ve gone towards the complainant.
Due to previous violations by the company and failing to maintain the written rules on its website, the FCC has increased the base penalty from $4000 up to th3 $20,000 proposed.