The
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has responded to a petition by commercial
broadcaster Saga Communications to deny five Charlottesville LPFM stations renewal
of their broadcasting licenses. Saga alleges that the five stations have acted
in a "pattern of abuse" that disqualifies them for renewal of their
licenses.
Spark
News first reported on this story in September 2019 [link], shortly after Saga
filed their complaint.
The
battle pits Saga, a publicly traded corporation with over 100 stations in 27
markets and an annual revenue that tops $133 million, against five separately
licensed LPFM stations with combined annual revenue of less than $200,000.
According
to reports last week in the Roanoke Times
[link] and the trade publication Radio
Ink [link], the
FCC has asked the licensees of the five LPFM stations to respond to 18
questions within 30 days.
The five noncommercial stations are WXRK-LP, WPCV-LP,
WREN-LP, WVIA-LP and WKMZ-LP, a full-time repeater of WREN. The five LPFMs
stations operate from a building in a strip mall located at 394 Hillsdale Drive
in Charlottesville, behind a Burger King.
A
spokesperson for Saga said in September that five LPFMs are “acting too much
like a cluster of commercial stations." Saga owns and operates six commercial
stations (4 FM, 2 AM) in the Charlottesville market.
The
five LPFM stations are affiliated with the Virginia Radio Coop (VRC), a
non-profit organization that provides common support functions such as
leasing studios and offices, transmitter site rentals and group purchases of
equipment and office supplies.
Also, the LPFM stations are represented by Experience Media Sales, a for-profit firm that sells underwriting announcements.
 |
| All 5 LPFM stations broadcast from this building |
The
stations claim there are no brokerage or joint management agreements. Each of
the five stations is operate independently, have a unique board of directors
and make their own programming and management decisions.
Saga’s
Petition to Deny [download it here]
claims that the five stations are in violation of FCC rules by entering into “a
de facto joint operating agreement.” Saga also says that the five stations have
acted in a "pattern of abuse" that disqualifies them for renewal of
their licenses. The petition also claims that the five LPFM stations are not
operating in the public’s interest.
Michael
Richards, a communications attorney based in Washington, DC, represents the
LPFM stations told Radio Ink in October that though the stations are located in
the same building, doesn’t mean they are operating together. Richards said what
the LPFMs are doing is a legitimate way for each of the stations to save money.
 |
|
Jeff Lenert,
co-founder of WPVC-LP,
Charlottesville,
Virginia
|
Jeff
Lenert, co-founder of WPVC-LP told The
Roanoke Times last week that he wasn’t concerned about losing its license:
“I don’t think this
complaint will go very far, but I’m not sure that’s the intention. I think Saga
sees us as a threat for whatever reason and they’re trying to make us spend a
bunch of money to defend ourselves.”
In
Saga’s Petition to Deny, they asked the FCC to hold an evidentiary hearing to
probe the matter. Last week, the FCC responded. They ordered each of the five
LPFM licensees to answer 18 questions and provide relevant documents. You can
download the FCC’s questions here.
Spark News has reviewed the 18
questions. Most deal with the relationships between the stations. Here is a
sample of what the FCC is looking for:
•
Provide all documentation of, or relating to, any agreement oral or written
between or among two or more of the licensees, or their representatives (past
or present) to apply for, or obtain, one or more LPFM authorizations. If any
agreement is, or was, oral, its substance should be reduced to writing and
produced with all other documentation.
•
Provide a narrative describing fully the planning and establishment of
the…Radio Coop. Provide the first and last name of each person identified as
involved in any of the matters addressed in the narrative.
•
Provide documentation…of payments made or received from Experience Media, LLC.
The
FCC ordered each of the five LPFM licensees to provide answers and supporting
documents within thirty days.
KEN SAYS: LPFM and
other noncommercial broadcasters should pay close attention to this case. If the
FCC rules in favor of Saga, it may have an impact on other noncom radio coops
nationwide.
LPFMs and other
noncom stations have, or are interested in, cooperative agreements with other
stations to decrease overhead and operate more efficiently.
It is hard to imagine
that the five LPFM stations in Charlottesville have put even dent in Saga’s advertising revenue. To us, this
is a large corporation creating an expensive legal dispute to bleed smaller
noncommercial “competitors” out of business.
Are you actually advocating that it's OK for LPFM stations to break FCC rules? If this were a full powered non-comm, would you be making the same argument?
ReplyDeleteThis isn't about "the big bad corporation" trying to screw the little guy, it's about making sure everyone plays by the rules. Having an FCC license means you have to follow the rules or face punishment, from EAS, public file, ownership requirements, to airing legal IDs. LPFMs were created to allow non-profits to superserve their communities with content the commercial broadcasters don't provide. In doing so, the FCC says you have to obey the same underwriting rules as other non-comms, and have certain ownership and programming requirements.
Why? Because otherwise what's their point? It's one more point of interference in an already packed FM band.
Follow the rules and there are no problems. If this group is indeed acting as a defacto commercial group and flaunting the rules, they should be enforced, because there are plenty more LPFMs doing just this that need to be sent a message. It's not fair for anyone else who has to play by the rules.
I appreciate your comment because I am sure how I feel this case. I will have a reply on Friday's post. thanks.
DeleteIf this were a commercial operation no one would be batting an eye at anything other than airing ads, which I'll grant you they absolutely should not be doing.
DeleteThere have been multiple ways in which LPFM's have been put behind the proverbial 8 ball. They operate under myriad constraints that completely handcuff them and make them incapable of self-support let alone profit. Thanks, NAB and commercial broadcasters that are more worried about dink LPFM operators and what they're doing more than putting out an on-air product that potential listeners might enjoy, helping their own commercial viability.
I'm not in favor of full commercialization, but if the likes of iHeart, EMF, Urban One and the rest can own hundreds of stations nationwide? A non-profit should be allowed to operate two or three LPFM's in a market if that's what is needed for coverage purposes. The better solution would be to pump up wattage levels so this kind of thing was unnecessary, but again... thanks NAB and scared commercial broadcasters!
This is one of those cases where one's perspective is going to have a significant impact on whether or not what the LPFM's are doing is "right" (legal) or "wrong" (illegal). My general sense is to be sympathetic to the LPFM's here, but I'd have to spend a lot more time investigating (and I mean to the level of physically going there and listening to them all for a few months) before I felt comfortable deciding that they were breaking the rules or not.
ReplyDeleteBut I can say this: I personally saw Saga operate with highly questionable motives in attempts to drive out all competition in the Ithaca NY market about ten years ago. They never broke the law, but they employed some pretty sleazy tactics to drive WFIZ out of business and then took it over. And they reeeeally stretched the concept of ownership limits through hyper-aggressive use of HD multicast channels and FM translators...which in terrain-limited market like Ithaca, it's both easy to drop in a 250 watt transmitter AND cover the entire market with it. Again: perfectly legal, but pretty sleazy. And I was assured Ithaca was not a unique case when it comes to Saga's tactics.
Of course, there's nothing that says that Saga is being sleazy here *AND* the LPFM's are breaking the rules. Both can easily be true.
FWIW, at Hobart & William Smith Colleges we had WEOS 89.5FM and WHWS-LP 105.7FM. Both operated out of the same physical studio/office space, and had the same management staff. We had different trustees at first, because originally WHWS-LP was owned by the Smith Opera House but during my tenure we convinced the FCC to let us transfer ownership to the college (to codify what was already in place in reality) under the rubric that WEOS was a professional NPR station, and WHWS-LP was a student LPFM station.
And AFAIK we adhered to the letter of the law and I feel pretty strongly we adhered to the spirit of the law as well. I worked damn hard to build up student interest and create a student management team for the LPFM. We VERY rarely simulcast on both stations (when we did there was usually a good reason, and it wasn't a rebroadcast; it was both stations airing the same satellite feed) but we made full use of the fact that the LPFM had access to all the same technology the NPR station had. We finagled the old live version of The Takeaway for mornings and had Radio Bilingue overnights, and then automated music the rest of the day for whenever students weren't on the air (it wasn't a big school...for us it was a major accomplishment to go from 20-30 students involved to 50+ students).
My point is you CAN have an LPFM sharing a lot of operational and physical resources with another station...full power or otherwise...and still be perfectly legal AND perfectly adhering to the spirit of LPFM. So I wouldn't make too many assumptions (one way or the other) about what the LPFM's were doing in this case, not without a lot more information than has been publicly made available so far.