SPB\u2019s \u201cAwesome AM 980\u201d WABG Greenwood, MS has been held up by Chair Brendan Carr as an example of how the Federal Communications Commission will respond to stations it believes aren\u2019t meeting public interest obligations. The Media Bureau last month downgraded the station to a one-year license renewal for what it said was public file violations. Now the Mississippi broadcaster is asking the FCC to reconsider that decision.<\/p>\n
SPB doesn\u2019t dispute the station missed an April 10 deadline to upload its first-quarter issues\/programs list to the online public inspection file. Instead, it argues in a petition for reconsideration<\/a> that the violation occurred only nine days after the FCC and station entered into a consent decree designed to address earlier compliance issues.<\/p>\n \u201cThis petition asks for something narrower and more defensible,\u201d the company says.<\/p>\n The FCC decision last month to give WABG a one-year license term<\/a> came just weeks after it had reached a consent decree<\/a> in April that resolved other violations stemming from a 2015 ownership change. It required SPB to implement a compliance plan, including appointing a compliance officer, adopt internal procedures, conduct staff training tied to FCC rules, and pay a $1,000 fine.<\/p>\n But the Media Bureau alleges the station failed to upload a required quarterly issues\/programs list to its online public inspection file by the April 10 deadline included in the consent decree \u2014less than 10 days after the FCC approved the agreement. Because the lapse occurred after the April 1 consent decree, the Bureau treated it as a new violation, outside the scope of the earlier settlement.<\/p>\n SPB contends the Bureau’s response was disproportionate because the missed filing occurred before the compliance framework had been fully implemented. It argues several mitigating factors were not considered, including the station’s owner and manager traveling internationally. \u201cWABG operates with a single principal; there is no backup compliance staff or delegated filing coordinator,\u201d the petition explains.<\/p>\n The filing also asks the FCC to investigate whether technical issues with the online public file system may have contributed to the missed upload. SPB says it encountered \u201cdifficulty\u201d accessing and uploading information through the OPIF portal. It also cites problems accessing the CORES payment system. According to SPB, it attempted to pay the earlier $1,000 fine, but the bill wasn\u2019t in the FCC payment system. Included emails show FCC staff later informed the company the bill had only recently been established and that payment could then be made through CORES. SPB ultimately paid the full $1,000 on May 8.<\/p>\n The station also argues the Bureau’s own order undermines the basis for the one-year renewal. The petition notes that in imposing the short-term renewal, the Bureau specifically declined to find that WABG had been operated in an \u201cexceedingly careless, inept and negligent manner\u201d or that the licensee could not be relied upon to comply in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cThose express declinations \u2014 drawn directly from the controlling standard \u2014 foreclose the most severe sanctions and undercut the justification for the one-year renewal actually imposed,\u201d SPB argues. The filing also claims the Bureau’s action was arbitrary and capricious under federal law because it is based on a single missed OPIF upload occurring nine days after the consent decree took effect.<\/p>\n In the petition, SPB asks the FCC to reopen the record and allow for supplemental submissions and investigate possible OPIF access issues. It also wants the agency to vacate the one-year renewal term, and either restore a standard renewal or continue oversight through the existing consent decree compliance framework.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPB\u2019s \u201cAwesome AM 980\u201d WABG Greenwood, MS has been held up by Chair Brendan Carr as an example…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,7056,216,3],"class_list":["post-695432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-free","tag-music","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}