FCC slams record $24 million fine on Univision

Univision Communications Inc., the largest Spanish-language broadcaster of the U.S., could face a record $24 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission for failing to meet government rules for educational children’s programming. The FCC is expected to slap U.S. Hispanic network Univision with a record fine that will allow the broadcaster to proceed with a $12 billion private equity buyout. The record punitive fine involves Univision’s airing of a show three years back about misadventures of 11-year-old twin girls who swapped identities after discovering they were separated at birth. According to the FCC, Univision has clearly mischaracterized the program as educational. The penalty is almost three times greater than the previous record fine of $9 million, awarded against Quest Communications for violating telephone interconnection rules in 2004. Considerably more than the largest indecency penalty, $3.5 million, that was imposed against Viacom that same year for remarks by Howard Stern and other so-called shock jocks on the radio. The recent decision of the FCC to penalize the company in question also represents an unusually aggressive enforcement of the 1996 regulations that interpreted the Children’s Television Act. In fact, these regulations were adopted after some telecasters attempted to pass off cartoons like “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons” as educational programs. The regulations imposed more substantive requirements on the networks to comply with the mandate to broadcast at least three hours a week of programs of intellectual value to young people.