EVANSVILLE – The complaints Evansville residents filed to the Federal Communications Commission over the last three years cover more than 500 pages. But one sentence, written by an annoyed local in February, sums them up in only a few words:
“I never wanted or requested this.”
The documents, obtained by the Courier & Press via a public records request earlier this year, show a frustrated citizenry awash in scam-riddled text messages and robocalls. The intrusions come even after a person has blocked the caller or added their own number to the Do Not Call Registry.
Hundreds of letters about scammers promising fake $5,000 DOGE checks or enrollment into non-existent home warranties or Medicare plans sit alongside complaints about getting overcharged by AT&T, Astound or Spectrum. Some claimed their number had been “spoofed,” while others said telemarketers outright threatened them.
Several residents complained about Jimmy Kimmel’s brief removal from the airwaves in September. And one person angry over this year’s Super Bowl halftime show sent the FCC a treasure trove of explicit Bad Bunny lyrics, even though the singer never actually sang those words during his performance.
The following is a rundown of the issues that stretch from February 2023 to just a few weeks ago.
Scams and threats
Since scammers often attempt to prey on the elderly, Medicare-related calls were prevalent. More than a dozen Evansville residents complained about fielding anywhere from 10 to 30 calls a day, especially during the enrollment period.
“However, now that the enrollment period is up, I continue to receive many robo- and call-center phone calls,” one person wrote. “One tried to get me to try out a leg brace free of charge. I don’t need a leg brace.”
Many callers claimed to be collection agencies looking to settle hazy debts or back taxes. And to make things worse, the calls would occasionally come from familiar numbers.
At least a dozen people wrote to say their phone numbers or the phone numbers of loved ones had been “spoofed,” or fraudulently listed in the caller ID to break down a recipient’s defenses, making it easier to bilk them out of cash or information.
Other calls devolved into threats.
In April 2024, an Evansville resident said an exchange between him and a telemarketer vaguely pestering him about “funding” deteriorated so thoroughly that the scammer left a voicemail promising to call four times in a row everyday “until one of us dies.”
A month later, a different resident had an even more rattling encounter. They told the FCC they fielded a call from a stranger who somehow knew their name and who kept asking if they could “be friends.”
The resident asked the person to never call again. That was an “unreasonable request,” the caller said.
They “immediately became very mean and defensive, calling me a bitch and saying my whole family is liars (sic) and that I’ve been making trouble,” the resident wrote. “I’m just concerned because I don’t know where they got my number or how they know my name and I’m worried they might try to reach me in some other way or hurt me or my family.”
Political texts
About the only thing as common as annoying calls were annoying texts. Especially political ones.
Residents reported barrages from all sides of the aisle. Those claiming to be associated with President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, however, were the most common. Several mentioned Trump by name, but the FCC sporadically redacted mentions of the president from the records, blocking it in one paragraph and leaving it visible in the next.
Some texts promised a “BOMBSHELL” announcement or a piece of news that would “drop your jaw!” All you had to do was click a sketchy link at the bottom of the message. Known as “phishing scams,” the Federal Trade Commission has often warned people those links can lead to attempts to steal your identity.
To entice a click, some promised thousands of dollars in fake DOGE or tariff refund checks. Follow the link to get yours “unfrozen,” they claimed.
Others tried to use fake, explosive secrets to form a bond with the recipient – “I need this to stay between us. If the wrong people see it, they’ll use it against us”– while some just grabbed the eye with colorful language.
“Pres (REDACTED) comes clean about the 2020 election & reveals new development that will make you puke,” it read.
Loud commercials
Between 2018 and 2023, Evansville residents repeatedly complained to the FCC about loud commercials. They’d be watching a show at a normal volume when an ad would suddenly begin screeching at ear-shredding levels.
The newest records show little has changed since then.
One woman in particular shared a harrowing story. She and her husband often watched Haunt TV or the Fear Zone Channel: free streaming stations packed with ghost-hunting shows. Nearly every commercial break, she wrote, an ad for an HIV medication would blare at a staggering volume. It was so loud she’d sometimes spill her coffee or watch her pets flee from the room.
Ironically, or maybe as a joke, the woman reported the issue to the FCC in all-caps: the typographical equivalent of screaming.
“JUST BECAUSE WE LIKE GHOST STORIES DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE ENJOY BEING YELLED AT AND SCARED BY AN AIDS/HIV COMMERCIAL,” she wrote.
Jimmy Kimmel and Bad Bunny
Perhaps the biggest FCC-related scandal of the year centered around late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel. In September, Nexstar – owner of Evansville’s WEHT/WTVW – led the charge to preempt Kimmel’s ABC show due to remarks he made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting.
ABC’s parent company announced it was pulling Kimmel from the air shortly after other affiliate owners followed Nexstar’s lead. The decisions came not long after FCC chairman Brendan Carr lambasted Kimmel to right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson and said the FCC could potentially take some sort of action against ABC if they didn’t address Kimmel’s comments.
It also occurred while Nexstar awaited FCC approval for its $6.2 billion deal to acquire fellow media company TEGNA Inc.
All of it was supposedly sparked by Kimmel’s monologue the night after the Kirk shooting. But in it, he condemned Kirk’s killing and called any comments celebrating it “extraordinarily vile.”
Kimmel was eventually reinstated, and the whole incident led to a spike in his ratings. In the aftermath, however, multiple Evansville residents wrote the FCC to denounce Nexstar and ABC’s moves.
Strangely, in the records, the FCC treated sometimes Kimmel’s name like did it Trump’s, randomly redacting it in some instances and leaving it alone in others.
“I object to the cancellation of ‘(REDACTED) Live’ after pressure from the administration,” one read. “This is censorship, plain and simple, and it’s not what American values stand for. We need leaders to protect freedom of speech, not punish it.”
“Viewers are not a pawn in Nexstar’s political games,” another wrote.
The response to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, meanwhile, was smaller. It only inspired one letter. But it was a memorable one.
The Puerto Rican superstar’s headlining show, which was done mostly in Spanish and repeatedly praised both the U.S. and its island territory, sparked a pool of outrage in some right-wing circles. That inspired Kid Rock and other performers to stage an alternative show that would air at the same time. According to ESPN, about 5 million people watched that livestream at its peak. Compare that to about 128 million viewers for Bad Bunny.
On Feb. 9, the day after the Super Bowl, an Evansville resident wrote the FCC and included the entire English translation of Bad Bunny’s hit “Safaera.” Many of the lyrics contained explicit references to sex.
Problem was, Bad Bunny didn’t perform those lines during the show itself.
USA Today and other outlets found he either omitted explicit parts of his songs or intentionally mumbled them so much that even fluent Spanish speakers couldn’t understand them.
Later in February, FCC commissioner Anna Gomez said she’d reviewed transcripts of the entire show and found “no violation of our rules and no justification for harassing broadcasters over a standard live performance.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Bad Bunny, scams and threats: Here are Evansville’s FCC complaints
Reporting by Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
