FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. — A religious institution that sought reconsideration of its construction permit for a new low-power FM radio station that would have been short-spaced to big facilities owned by Audacy Inc. and iHeartRadio, respectively, has been told by the FCC that it cannot move forward with its plan.
Coral Gables-based All Nations New Testament Church of God Fellowship Inc. participated in a Low Power FM filing window opened by the Commission on December 6, 2023 and closed nine days later. Its application included a “second adjacent waiver request,” absent of any technical exhibits in support of the waiver, which would have put a facility at 100.3 MHz — right between WKIS-FM 99.9, licensed to Boca Raton, and WHYI-FM 100.7, licensed to Fort Lauderdale.
On April 29, FCC Media Bureau staff dismissed the application for its failure to meet the Commission’s minimum distance spacing requirements.
Undaunted, All Nations on May 31 filed a petition for reconsideration seeking nunc pro tunc reinstatement of the application and a waiver of section 73.870(c) of the Commission’s rules in order to amend its Second Adjacent Waiver Request to now include an engineering exhibit. The PFR also included the assertion that, had Commission staff notified All Nations that its application required additional information, it would have supplied the engineering
exhibit.
How did Audio Division Chief Al Shuldiner respond? “Petitioner has not demonstrated any legal error in the Bureau’s dismissal of the Application, nor has it cited any precedent that warrants reinstatement,” he declared. “Specifically, LPFM applicants must protect authorized FM stations, pending applications for new and existing FM stations filed prior to the release of the Procedures Public Notice, authorized LPFM stations, and vacant FM allotments, by meeting the minimum distance separation requirements specified in section 73.807 of the Commission’s rules … Moreover, the Procedures Public Notice warned LPFM applicants that, “[c]onsistent with established processing rules, an LPFM application that fails to protect these authorizations, applications, and vacant FM allotments will be dismissed with no opportunity to correct the deficiency.”
Additionally, although section 3(b)(2)(A) of the Local Community Radio Act of 2010 (LCRA)
authorizes the Commission to waive second-adjacent channel spacing requirements, an LPFM applicant must specifically request the waiver and demonstrate that its proposed LPFM facilities “will not result in interference to any authorized radio service.”
All Nations attempted to place a low-power FM signal on a frequency that was unsuccessful for iHeartMedia a decade ago, due to interference concerns. From April 2010 through March 2014, the former W262AN at 100.3 MHz was located in Tamarac, Fla., and served as a “FM revitalization” partner for News/Talk WIOD-AM 610. The FM translator, leased by iHeart from Reach Communications, was killed after Jim Robinson complained about interference to his Class A Nostalgia station, WLML-FM in Lake Park, Fla., which serves the West Palm Beach market.
Then came a November 2016 plan to shift W223CB to 100.3 MHz and rebroadcast WFLL-AM 1400 . That did not transpire. However, in June 2019 a 97-watt LPFM based in the Norland section of North Miami Beach, Fla., was granted a license from the FCC as WQNB. Today, it is licensed and silent; the Instagram page for WQNB has not been updated since 2022.
