The FCC Enforcement Bureau sent its annual EEO audit letters to randomly selected stations on Friday. The audit arrives at a particularly charged moment for broadcast diversity policy, just days after Disney sued the FCC over its investigation into DEI policies.
As in past years, approximately 5% of all broadcast stations nationwide are selected under the Commission’s EEO rules.
Audited stations must upload their two most recent EEO Public File Reports and supporting documentation to their online public inspection files by October 20. Stations with fewer than five full-time employees are exempt from several of the audit’s more detailed questions.
Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the 2025 audit letters added new questions asking stations to disclose any internal employee complaints related to race, gender, or other DEI-related bias, whether any employees were sanctioned for failing to comply with diversity policies, and whether the station uses race-based hiring databases. Those same categories of questions appear again in the 2026 audit letter, tracking closely with Carr’s broader push against “invidious” DEI policies.
The Commission opened a DEI investigation into Disney and its ABC-owned stations in March 2025, and in April 2026 it ordered Disney’s eight ABC-owned television stations to file for early license renewal years ahead of schedule, citing that investigation. Days before this year’s EEO audit letters went out, Disney and ABC sued the FCC, calling the license review a “retaliatory campaign” tied to the network’s news coverage. Carr defended the investigation publicly the same day, saying Disney “appears to be nervous about what the record shows.”
While the Disney matter is a separate, targeted proceeding from the randomized EEO audits, the two actions draw on the same underlying authority, and stations receiving this year’s audit letter will be answering some of the same categories of DEI-related questions the FCC has directed at Disney.
