[IRCA] FCC: Station relocated itself by 36 miles

[Mike Terry <miketerry73@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Inside Radio
July 18, 2013

FCC field agents often use direction finding equipment to track down a pirate station, but in this case it was hot on the trail of a licensed operator.  But when they started on their journey last October to find out who was behind a station at 89.7 FM in Buffalo, NY, the one thing the agents knew is that there shouldn’t have been any station on that frequency in the market.

The Philadelphia-based team tracked the signal back to the Fellowship Christian Center.  What they found wasn’t a pirate, but Fellowshipworld’s WFWO, which should have instead been broadcasting from a site in Knowelsville, NY — 36 miles away.   When they reached Fellowshipworld president John Young, he told the agents they stopped using their licensed tower site because the property owner needed to remove some trees around the antenna.   He agreed to power down WFWO, but it was just a few weeks later the FCC was alerted by an engineer at another station that it was back on the air from its site on Main Street — in Buffalo.   Young blamed his children, but in April Fellowshipworld told the FCC it was temporarily going off the air.

In proposing an $8,000 fine against Fellowshipworld, the Enforcement Bureau notes it could hand out a penalty half that size — but the broadcaster demonstrated a “deliberate disregard” for FCC requirements by moving more than 30 miles in order to reach a significantly larger audience in the Buffalo metro.

“We view the misconduct in this case to be egregious,” Northeast Region director David Dombrowski writes in the decision.  Fellowshipworld has 30 days to appeal the proposed fine.

- See more at: http://www.insideradio.com//Article.asp?id=2676909#.Uefz5KBwbDc  ;
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