WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau has issued its 2025 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) audit letters to a randomly selected group of radio and television stations.
Each year, approximately five percent of all radio and television stations are selected for EEO audits.
A list of the radio and television stations selected for the 2025 audit as well as the text of the August 8 audit letter is available here.
Given the FCC’s aggressive crackdown on DEI initiatives and successful efforts to get companies like Verizon and Paramount to abandon DEI policies as part of merger reviews, ome analysts hsad expected the agency to drop the audits.
“In our recent post on the FCC’s first EEO audit of the Carr administration at the FCC, we expressed surprise that the audit was released, thinking that the Commission might move to revise the EEO rules and put enforcement of the current rules on hold, just as it has done with the Biennial Ownership Reports,” attorney David Oxenford noted in a blog.
“But thanks to another attorney who more closely reviewed the language of the FCC’s audit letter and alerted me to changes in these letters, we now know that the audits actually go beyond the issues previously reviewed by the FCC – and seek out information about programs that favor one race, ethnicity or gender in hiring and other employment evaluations” he continued. “The audits now seem to be aimed in part at seeking out the types of “invidious” DEI programs – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — that the current administration has labeled as discriminatory in and of themselves in transactions involving the biggest players in the communications industry. The FCC now seems to be looking for evidence of these DEI programs at all broadcast stations, just as they are seeking to root out and end these policies in other industries throughout the country.”
Oxenford also stressed that whatever the future of these audits might be, stations need to reply to the letters and take them seriously as broadcasters have been fined in the past for not supplying the information.
The deadline for stations to upload responses to their FCC-hosted online public inspection files is September 22, 2025.
The FCC said that stations seeking further information, should contact the Enforcement Bureau at EB-EEO@fcc.gov or 202-418-1450.
