WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has entered into a Consent Decree with Cunningham Broadcasting that ends a longstanding investigation into violations of children’s programming rules.
As part of the settlement, the agency has agreed to renew six broadcast TV stations and Cunningham has agreed to put in place measures to avoid violations of children’s programming rules.
The investigation follows a settlement with Sinclair in late June that ended investigations into a number of issues. One of those was violations of children’s programming rules relating to a commercial for the “Hot Wheels Super Ultimate Garage” toy that was inadvertently aired by stations on eleven occasions during eight 30 minute-long episodes of the program titled "Team Hot Wheels".
The program and commercial were distributed by Sinclair under a programming block entitled “KidsClick.” Sinclair stopped distributing the KidsClick program block as of March 31, 2019. Since the Sinclair settlement, the FCC has settled with several other broadcasters over the same violations.
The station renewals are for Tri-Cities (WEMT-TV) Licensee, Inc.; Anderson (WFBC-TV), Licensee, Inc.; Portland (WPFO-TV) Licensee, Inc.; Columbus (WTTE-TV) Licensee, Inc.; New Bern (WYDO-TV) Licensee, Inc.; and Greenville (KTXD-TV) Licensee, Inc. All of those are licensee subsidiaries of Cunningham Broadcasting Corporation.
