In the northwest corner of Iowa, on the banks of the Little Sioux River, is a small city that offers a variety of choices for FM radio listeners. They presently include 50kw Worship Music-focused “Kinship Radio” home KJIA-FM in Spirit Lake; a repeater of KNWC “Life 96.5,” an Adult Contemporary Christian Music choice; and KTFG-FM, a member of the Christian Talk & Teaching Bott Radio Network.
Should Spencer, Iowa, get a fourth broadcast home for religious programming? The FCC just said yes. But, it won’t have the power output it requested in an amended filing.
St. Gabriel Communications, parent of the Iowa Catholic Radio enterprise heard on six FM frequencies across the Hawkeye State, has gotten the OK from Al Shuldiner, Chief of the FCC’s Media Division Audio Bureau, to build a new noncommercial FM serving Spencer.
This would bring ICR and its brand of Christian Talk and Teaching programming to the city’s residents.
The approval comes after ICR filed two amendments to its original application submitted to the Commission. It was done in response to the new NCE application filing window that was open from November 2-9, 2021.
But, it did not come without an informal objection from Kevin Youngers of Greely, Colo., and a related responsive pleading. And, it came after the first group the FCC identified failed to move forward.
Here’s what transpired. ICR’s application was identified as mutually exclusive in the NCE filing window, and placed in MX Group 78 along with three other applicants: Fairmont Area Catholic Radio, We Have This Hope Christian Radio Inc. and national player VCY America.
As it turns out, Fairmont was the tentative selectee. On May 16, 2022, St. Gabriel filed a minor technical amendment to its application. This eliminated its mutual exclusivity with all of the other applications in MX Group 78 and rendered its application a singleton.
Two days later, without any objections, the Commission granted St. Gabriel’s application while moving ahead with an OK of the FACR application, too. Then, on May 19, St. Gabriel amended its application a second time. Why? With a dismissal of the VCY America application, St. Gabriel asked the FCC to approve a wattage increase from 6kw to 22kw.
Then came Youngers, who on June 14 filed his objection. What was his beef? He claims the amendments from St. Gabriel are impermissible on the grounds that St. Gabriel should not have been permitted to file its May 16 or May 19 amendments because “[n]o amendments on the original NCE applications were allowed after the settlement period which were before the [Fair Distribution Order].”
Not so, says St. Gabriel, which responded to the Commission by noting that section 73.7003(d) of the Commission’s rules permits applications to be amended at any time, and that the Commission routinely accepts minor technical amendments after the settlement period has run.
The verdict? Shuldiner rejected Younger’s suggestion that the May 16 amendment to the SGC application was prohibited, and that the application grant would violate the one-grant policy.
But what about that power increase request? Here is where Youngers is correct, and Shuldiner denied it. “Unlike the May 16 amendment, SGC’s May 19 amendment is dependent on the Commission involuntarily dismissing the VCY Application, which is the type of secondary grant the Commission previously rejected,” he ruled. “The Commission has affirmed the dismissal of applications that became singletons based solely on the involuntary dismissal of other conflicting applications in the MX group.”
Who is Kevin Youngers? He is a licensee of Christian-themed radio stations and served as a technical consultant for Mountain Radio Group in 2017. In 2015, RBR+TVBR reported on the sale of his KPCR-FM in Fowler, Colo., to Way Media.
