The Federal Communications Commission has blocked an effort to build what could have become a sprawling network of low-power FM stations across the country, dismissing three dozen applications linked to longtime community organizer Wade Rathke and the Affiliated Media Foundation Movement (AMFM). The decision came after the FCC concluded the proposed stations were not genuinely local.<\/p>\n
The decision reaches well beyond a dispute over a single LPFM applicant. The Audio Division says the applications were part of a coordinated expansion effort by AMFM, which already operates WAMF-LP New Orleans (90.3), and has openly discussed plans to build a network by organizing nonprofit corporations or partnering with local groups to apply for stations, manage their operations and distribute programming.<\/p>\n
While the FCC stopped 36 of those applications, Rathke-associated groups didn\u2019t come away empty-handed. Two other applications tied to Rathke and AMFM \u2014 Delta New Foundation and Action Institute NC \u2014 were previously granted, and the FCC says those grants are final. Five additional Rathke-connected applications are being considered separately.<\/p>\n
The 36 applications dismissed were filed during the FCC’s 2023 LPFM window and sought stations in communities stretching from California and Colorado to Arkansas, Mississippi, Virginia and Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
What caught the FCC’s attention was how much the supposedly local applicants had in common.<\/p>\n
All 36 were incorporated in Louisiana and identified Rathke as their registered agent and contact representative, used email addresses tied to AMFM, and contained nearly identical educational narratives. Of the group, 33 of the organizations were incorporated in October or November 2023, just weeks before the LPFM filing window, and all 33 used the same New Orleans mailing address associated with Rathke and AMFM.<\/p>\n
That is an issue because LPFM was specifically designed as a local service. Under government rules, a nonprofit applicant must have a physical headquarters within the required distance of its proposed transmitter, or have at least 75% of its board members living within that area.<\/p>\n
The 36 applicants relied on the headquarters test. But the FCC concluded that the organizations were actually headquartered at AMFM’s New Orleans address and that the local addresses listed in their applications were generally the homes or businesses of individual directors or local supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo applicant is grounded in the local community its LPFM station proposes to serve,\u201d Audio Division Chief Albert Shuldiner writes in the order<\/a> released Monday.<\/p>\n The Commission says simply using the address of a \u201clocal sponsor or representative\u201d doesn\u2019t create a local headquarters. Allowing that approach, it says, would undermine the purpose of LPFM by permitting organizations without a genuine local presence to qualify for licenses intended for community-based operators.<\/p>\n The Bureau found problems across the applications, including several cases in which none of an applicant’s board members even lived in the state where the proposed LPFM would operate. The FCC ultimately didn\u2019t need to decide whether Rathke was legally the party behind all 36 applications because their failure to satisfy the localism requirement was enough to dismiss them. But the Bureau says similarities among the applications led it to tentatively conclude that the applicants are under Rathke’s control and the applications were filed \u201cin an effort to circumvent the ownership restrictions of the LPFM service.\u201d<\/p>\n