An organization that wanted to build a new FM station in Chaparral, N.M., has lost an appeal at the FCC.
Centro Familiar de Restauracion y Vida had applied during last year’s NCE filing window and was placed in a group of seven mutually exclusive applicants. The Media Bureau subsequently ran those applications through its “fair distribution analysis” process and tentatively selected another applicant, Radio Bilingue Inc. But Centro filed a waiver request, arguing that its application really was only mutually exclusive with two others — and that both of those were defective, which would make Centro, it argued, a “singleton” that should receive the CP.
The FCC now has said no, listing several reasons.
The commission says it has a policy of granting only one application per MX group and not permitting “secondary grants.” It reiterated that petitions to deny may not be filed against non-tentative selectees such as the two other applicants mentioned above.
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It also does not generally consider informal objections or petitions to deny in these circumstances unless the objection is to the accuracy of its fair distribution analysis. And it does not generally review MX applications for defects prior to being identified as tentative selectees.
The FCC also said that Centro’s waiver request failed to identify circumstances that warrant a waiver of the one-grant policy.
“The only justification Centro identifies for a waiver — that the Centro Application is only mutually exclusive with two technically defective applications, neither of which is the tentative selectee — is not a special circumstance because such a situation, where dismissing technically defective applications would result in a singleton, is likely to occur repeatedly, particularly in large mutually exclusive application groups.” And it said Centro failed to explain how the public interest would be served by a waiver.
The commission denied the waiver request and dismissed Centro’s application for a CP.
