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the referral source of each person interviewed, along with a record of who was hired,that person’s references, and the hire date (or “date of hire” – either helps removepronoun issue). These reports must be in a station’s public file, and are to besubmitted to the FCC at renewal time as well as midway through the license term. Inaddition, beginning in September 2003, stations must file an annual report with theCommission stating the gender and race/ethnicity of each of its employees. The FCCsays it will not use this information to evaluate compliance, but will use this data onlyfor statistical purposes. However, critics of the rules are concerned that the collection ofgender and race data will result in charges of discrimination related to the types ofemployment practices that have previously been rejected by the courts (Martin, 2003).Whether or not the new rules do pass judicial muster will remain to be seen in 2003 or2004.MethodologyTo answer RQ 1 the authors independently coded as Male, Female, or Unknown allpanelists listed in the program for the 2002 National Association of Broadcastersconvention adopting a methodology devised by Eastman & Leebron (1994). Likewise,to answer RQ 3, the authors similarly coded all program participants listed in theprogram for the 2002 Broadcast Education Association convention. Both conventionswere held in April, in Las Vegas. In both coding processes, names such as Chris, Terry,Pat and Lee were coded as “unknown,” unless the authors were familiar with theindividuals in question. Following independent coding of the data, the authorsdiscussed and resolved the few discrepancies through consensus. A similar procedurewas followed to answer RQ 2 and RQ 4; the authors independently coded as Male,Female, or Unknown all names listed in the NAB 2002 convention program asmembers of NAB Boards of Directors [i.e. Executive Committee, Radio Board,Television Board] and all persons listed in the BEA 2002 convention program asmembers of the BEA Leadership [i.e. Worldwide Headquarters Staff, Officers andDirectors, Convention Committees, and Interest Division Chairs.] For all fourresearch questions, the frequencies and percentages of male and female names werecomputed. The resulting percentages are compared to those percentages from theprevious year, as well as to those from 1993, the baseline year in which we began ouranalyses.NAB ResultsAnalysis of the 2002 NAB convention program revealed a total of 508 participants inpanels and presentations. The total number of NAB speakers/panelists continues totrend downward, dropping by 26.80 percent in three years – from 694 in 1998 to 508in 2002. Of these 508 participants, 417 (82.09 percent) were coded as male, 65(12.80 percent) were coded as female, and 26 (5.12 percent) were coded as genderunknown. When comparing only the 482 gender-known participants, the 65 femalesaccounted for 13.49 percent of the total, while the 417 males made up a corresponding86.51 percent of the total. The relative percentage of women essentially remainedsteady, despite the overall drop in the number of chairs and presenters, with a slightincrease (up 0.05 percent) in female participation over last year (2001). Table 1describes the level of female participation in the NAB convention this year, the changeBEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 23