One method of interpreting FCC rules is to review the violation notices they have issued. This page summarizes several thousand pages of violation notices and related correspondence (station responses, internal FCC documents, etc.) gained through Freedom of Information Act requests. All the documents have been reviewed and a summary of the violation provided (Note - the summary is just that - a summary. It is not an official document.).
The first such research was conducted on data from 1988. The data in the attached table is organized by rule section, then by station call letter. Each entry includes the type of violation notice, the initial fine (if any), a reduced fine (if any), and a description of the violation and station response. Each rule section includes a link to the current text of the rule. Clicking on the part before the decimal point brings up the rule in pdf format (as printed in the Code of Federal Regulations). Clicking on the section number after the decimal point brings up the rule in html with links to other cited rules, the Federal Register, FCC documents, and search links for the Federal Register and the FCC web site. Note that many rules have changed or been deleted since 1988, but it is felt that the data has historic value. Finally, note that the script that generates links to the FCC rules looks for numbers that look like FCC rules. There are cases where something looks like a rule to the script, but is not a rule. Try to ignore these false links!
An FOIA request for 1997 data was filed with the FCC in early 1998. The last of the data was delivered in March 1999. It is similarly summarized. Here, however, the violation description and station response have been separated into two fields. The rule links are the same format.
1997 was the first year of EAS, so the FCC did a lot of inspections of EAS installations. Further, in 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals found that the FCC Forfeiture Policy adopted previously amounted to a rulemaking and that the FCC had not followed appropriate public notice procedures prior to adopting this policy. In 1995, the FCC adopted an NPRM to adopt the policy with proper public notice and comment. The new forfeiture policy statement was adopted by Report and Order on June 19, 1997. During the interim period (which included more than half of 1997), the FCC issued very few forfeitures. A review of the violation data shows perhaps two forfeitures out of about 700 violations.