The FCC Media Bureau has granted a construction permit to New Media Humanity Association Inc. for a new noncom educational FM station in Florida’s Adventure Coast region.
This is the outcome of a group of mutually exclusive applications submitted in the 2021 NCE filing window.
New Media Humanity currently has an LPFM on 90.1 MHz in Brandon, Fla., which it will have to divest. Its new CP is for a Class A station on 88.1 in Weeki Wachee in Hernando County, about an hour’s drive north of Tampa (and home to a mermaid show and freshwater caves).
Three other applicants were vying for the Weeki Wachee slot. The FCC in January named New Media Humanity as the tentative selectee, but Call Communications Group Inc. filed a petition to deny, arguing that the FCC’s comparative analysis had been based on inaccurate information. It said a third applicant had improperly included significant areas of water in its calculation of proposed new coverage; excluding that application, it said, the FCC’s point total should have led to Call being chosen.
The FCC now says it agrees that the third application included significant areas of water in its calculation. Accepting that, however, does not automatically change the outcome.
Instead, the Media Bureau reanalyzed the applicants’ technical proposals using the revised figures Call provided. It found that “there is still no applicant eligible for points under the best technical proposal criterion because no applicant proposes to serve at least 10% more area and population than the next best proposal.”
So the commission now has granted the CP to New Media Humanity Association. It must divest itself of WYPW(LP) in Brandon before the new station signs on.
