Longtime listeners of Rizzo's morning show know all about the "Who Said That?" contest. Simply put, Rizzo and crew would play a short, bizarre audio clip and people had to guess whose voice it was. It was funny for awhile, and then became simply maddening near the end when literally no one could figure out the answer after Hammer picked some obscenely hard clip.
Well, according to Ohio Media Watch, the game has gotten WKNR 850 AM a $4,000 fine from the FCC.
Why? Because of some small print dealing with prizes and declarations of prizes.
The key rules were broadcast, and a more detailed set of rules was available on the station’s website.Things changed in the contest to identify the final clip in the contest. From the fall of 2007 until the contest’s conclusion 9/4/09 nobody was able to claim the prize. The station kept adding prizes to the pot. However, some of the prizes were no longer available due to the passage of time. But the station never noted this fact on air. The fact that the rules as posted on the web noted that some prizes may be replaced with others due to unavailability at the time of awarding was deemed not to remedy the fact that this was never announced over the air.
Even the fact that WKNR(AM) replaced the prizes with others of equal value was deemed insufficient to remedy the situation.
FCC noted, “Licensees, as public trustees, have the affirmative obligation to prevent the broadcast of false, misleading or deceptive contest announcements,33 and to conduct their contests substantially as announced.
There's more legal jargon over at OMW if you want to read the rest of it.
