In April 2017, Threshold Communications partners Jim Bryan and Ron Wulff emerged as the lone bidders in a Commission auction for a brand-new FM radio station serving a small town in Columbia County, Ore., 50 miles to the northwest of Portland.
However, Threshold believed moving the facility at 92.9 MHz, with 2,650 watts from 1,000 feet, to a city in Washington due north of Longview was in its best interests. The Media Bureau agreed, but an interloper didn’t. It was so against the move that it filed a Second Petition for Reconsideration in the hopes that the FCC would change its mind.
It did not.
As such, the Commission has held up the Media Bureau’s OK of a community change for unbuilt KVNW-FM to Napavine, Wash., from Clatskanie, Ore.
Premier Broadcasters didn’t want this to happen, and started its fight in May 2019. At that time, Premier sought to clarify “certain evidentiary burdens surrounding such change-of-community cases.”
They didn’t sway the Commission. The second effort didn’t either.
Threshold was the winning bidder in Auction 91 for an FM allotment on Channel 225C3 in Clatskanie. It proposed in an amended long-form application to change the allotment’s community to Napavine. This, Threshold argued, demonstrated higher section 307(b) priority.
Premier objected to the community change, claiming that the move-out community of Clatskanie had a greater need for new radio service, and arguing that application of the Commission’s urbanized area service presumption (UASP) demonstrated that moving the proposed station to Napavine did not represent a preferential arrangement of allotments.
In the Commission’s review of the second petition for reconsideration, the Commission ruled that it properly concluded that Premier failed to meet its burden of production. And, it said Threshold properly met its burden of persuasion.
Premier operates stations in the Centralia-Chehalis, Wash., region, immediately to the north of Napavine. As such, it will compete against KVNW.
