The recipient of a construction permit to build a low-power FM station on 99.5 MHz in Miami, Fla., has fought off a challenge at the FCC.
The case involves a group of mutually exclusive applications submitted in the FCC’s 2023 filing window for new LPFMs.
Originally there were five applications in this MX group. Two dropped out by making changes to their applications and becoming “singletons.”
The FCC then applied its “point system” analysis to the remaining three, and it chose two, tentatively deciding that La Familia De Fe Corp and Doral Voice Corp. should submit a voluntary time-sharing proposal.
But each raised concerns about the other.
La Familia and REC Networks argued, among other things, that none of the headquarters addresses in the DVC application and filings with Florida’s secretary of state were within 10 miles of the proposed transmitter site as required by LPFM rules.
Meanwhile Doral Voice told the FCC that La Familia President Rodolfo Martinez had engaged in pirate broadcasting by already broadcasting on 99.5, a frequency time-shared by WHIM(LP) and WBUJ(LP), and that he or his company exert control over WHIM and may have an undisclosed attributable interest in it.
The Media Bureau subsequently awarded a CP for WFRH(LP) to La Familia and rejected the Doral Voice application.
But Doral Voice then asked the bureau to reconsider the dismissal.
Among other reasons it said it subsequently had relocated its headquarters; that Rodolfo Martinez or La Familia really had engaged in unlicensed broadcasting and continue to do so; and that Martinez’s company was fully in control of WHIM.
The FCC Media Bureau now has rejected its reconsideration petition.
For one thing, it cites a precedent that an applicant may not “sit back and hope that a decision will be in its favor and, when it isn’t, to parry with an offer of more evidence.” It said Doral should have raised its localism defense earlier.
But the bureau also decided on separate grounds that the Doral petition was “meritless and repetitive.”
On the issue of local eligibility, the FCC says Doral Voice had “amended its application more than one year after filing the original DVC application, and well after the filing deadline.” So Doral Voice was not local at the time of filing the initial application, as required.
As to the La Familia application, the bureau upheld its decision. It said Doral Voice had failed to establish that La Familia or its president has engaged in pirate broadcasting, or that Martinez failed to disclose an attributable interest in WHIM.
You can read the FCC’s case summary and details of these legal arguments here.
