Advice for radio mice: don’t break FCC indecency rules during the shutdown

The Federal Communications Commission’s website is mostly down for the duration of the Federal government funding outage. Looks like the whole application filing system is temporarily kaput, which is probably bad news for the impending Low Power FM window, but we’ll have to see how long this crisis lasts.

In the meantime, we are noticing various “cats away? time for mice to play” comments on Facebook pages. Most along the lines of “Oh boy, does shutdown this mean we can break the FCC’s indecency rules now? Party!!!”

Very bad idea. The Commission’s Enforcement Bureau felines may be away for the moment, but when the system is restored, the online complaint mechanism will be back in business. Folks who heard your station’s expletive laden antics will then be able to file their protests, and your signal could find itself in that very special World of Pain that is an FCC indecency complaint investigation.

So mind your on air manners girls and boys. The FCC’s kitties will be back sooner or later, with claws just as sharp as before.