Battle of the FCC Filings Rage in Ithaca New York

RADIO ONLINE | , , | :am CT

There's a battle raging in Ithaca, NY, between ROI Broadcasting and Saga Communications. In the latest round, the agency denied ROI's objection in a what they treated as a Petition for Reconsideration when Saga filed an application for a minor change for FM translator station W277BSlast January.

The FCC staff granted the change on January 29, that same day ROI argued in another filing that the FCC's ruling would allow Saga to circumvent ownership rules. In addition, ROI argued that the Commission should refrain from action on any Saga applications until a "false certification claim" made against Saga in another proceeding is resolved.

The Commission said that ROI had failed to demonstrate a material error or omission in the staff's underlying action, and thus, reconsideration is not warranted.

ROI also argued that the Commission should rescind grant of the Saga application because Saga is using the station as a "main signal" to circumvent the local radio ownership rules. Specifically, ROI argued that Saga is using its two HD multicasr programming streams in combination with its "high-power" FM translators to effectively create two new FM stations in the Ithaca metro.

The Commission strongly disagreed and said that FM stations may use their additional digital bit rate capacity as it wishes. However, a licensee owning the maximum permissible number of stations in a particular market may not acquire additional broadcast streams on non-commonly-owned stations through time brokering agreements. In contrast, there is no prohibition on FM translator stations re-broadcasting the station's FM2 or FM3 digital programming stream.

Regarding the False Certification Issue, ROI argued that Saga Vice President Susan Johnston made "willful and false certifications" regarding the filing of a license application for the FM translator station W240CB (formerly W238AA). The Media Bureau recently found that Saga's actions in connection with its efforts to modify the facilities of FM translator station W240CB did not put in issue Saga's qualifications to remain a licensee.