REC has made some changes to FCCdata.org that will impact the display of assignment of license, transfer of control and ownership reports. These changes have also been integrated into our Japanese version, denpahoso.com. In addition to some minor fixes, the following are the major changes:
Display of Transfers of Control
Currently, FCCdata/denpahoso has been displaying transfers of control in the application history in a manner similar to how assignments are displayed. This does cause some confusion when researching the history of a station's ownership. As a result, we have removed the "From/To" headers before transfers of control. Instead, we now link all transfers of control to the public notice comments in FCC's CDBS Public Access. For history card records, clicking on the Transfer of Control link will direct you to the History Grid View. Near the bottom of the History Grid View is the transfer of control history that has been recorded by the REC Radio History Project.
With this change in place, you can better trace the changes of ownership in a broadcast station over time.
A transfer of control is filed when there is a significant change in the control of a broadcast entity. This can include the sale of stock or changes in the board of directors.
An assignment of permit or license is when the actual entity is changed such as the station is sold to another entity.
Improvement in display of ALTC data
When an owner wishes to assign more than one station at a time, they do have an option to file a single application to cover more than one station. Over time, this has not always displayed correctly in FCCdata/denpahoso. Going forward, we are now pulling additional information from the Assign License Transfer Control (ALTC) data table from the FCC to now properly display ALTC records on each station involved in an assignment or transfer. The FCC put this functionality into the database in late 2006. Therefore, this change will improve the display of that data.
Ownership Reports
First, we have fixed a long standing bug that has been not allowing ownership reports to properly display. We have also moved the REC Ownership Report Tool to the recnet.com platform consistent with the migration of previous REC tools. The Ownership Report Tool must continued to be accessed via FCCdata or denpahoso but we may change that in the future.
Some stations of large owners (such as iHeart Media/Clear Channel) will show a large number of ownership reports for each biennial period. This is due to the large number of entities that have some kind of attributable ownership. To help reduce the clutter on the application history for these stations, we have compiled all ownership reports filed in a single day to a single link. Clicking on that link will open a new browser window that will go to the REC Ownership Report tool and provide a list of all ownership reports filed on that date as well as the respondent for each of the applications. Clicking on the application reference number will display the ownership report data.
Like with Assign License Transfer Control (ALTC) applications, it is possible to put more than one station on an ownership report application. FCCdata and denpahoso have not been handling these correctly. This release will fix this problem by allowing the application records to be visible on all stations addressed in the ownership report.
Did you know?
Combining the records from CDBS and LMS as well as the efforts of the REC Radio History Project (history card, public notice and BAPS preservation), FCCdata and denpahoso currently has data on over 1.3 million FCC application records.
