A noncommercial FM licensed to serve the communities due northwest of Klamath Falls, Ore., has lost its license. Its call letters have been deleted by the FCC.
What happened? As Media Bureau Audio Division Al Shuldiner explained in a letter sent on Friday to the Davis, Calif., based licensee, the station was operating from an unauthorized location for more than one year.
That “unauthorized location” was a tree, located adjacent to the one it was actually licensed to use.
This, in turn, dismissed as moot a license renewal application submitted by Common Frequency for its KQCF-FM 88.1 in Chiloquin, Ore.
To learn why this happen, one must understand how KQCF constructed its “broadcast tower,” even though it has a Construction Permit for a facility in a rural, mountainous area to the east of Chiloquin with an October 2025 expiry date.
As Shuldiner explains, KQCF’s transmitter was “an antenna attached to a tree” in the yard of a residence in Chiloquin, a tribal community. And, it was OK with the FCC. Use of a tree as an antenna support structure for a broadcast station is uncommon but permissible — if the licensee complies with the FCC’s RF radiation rules and can demonstrate why it should do so.
While KQCF was in the clear to put its antenna in a tree, two things clouded its ability to retain its license. First, KQCF gained Special Temporary Authority to cease broadcasting for three periods of almost one year each during its license term. Second, KQCF’s transmitter moved three times — most recently in November 2022.
On January 9, the Bureau’s inquiry into these matters was made known to Common Frequency; KQCF went silent as it awaited the Bureau’s determination of whether
the station’s operations from November 2022 onward at the current location have been permissible.
Importantly, Shuldiner notes, “Operations from an unauthorized transmitter site are not considered ‘broadcast signals’ and are no better than silence.”
Thus, it can be said that even though KQCF was broadcasting, it wasn’t doing so from a tower site that had Commission approval. Further dooming Common Frequency was communication sent to a Bureau staff member roughly six months after the expiration of the authorization for the STA site. This notification provided the Commission with information that KQCF had resumed “normal licensed operations” on Nov. 1, 2022.
Curious as to what Common Frequency actually meant by that statement, it sent an inquiry letter. The licensee in June 2023 replied that it was operating with an antenna mounted “back at the authorized site,” which it described as a “tree adjacent to the last tree it was licensed at.”
The FCC wanted additional clarification on this information; it came on January 3, 2024, with Common Frequency acknowledging it did not regain use of the tree it was licensed to use but a tree right next to it, and over the property line between him and a neighbor.
The trees are 32 meters apart. Nevertheless, the tower move was done without FCC permission.
In its defense, Common Frequency argued that the transmitter move required no Commission authorization because the coordinates of the two trees differ by less than one second latitude and longitude, and interpreted section 73.1690(b)(2) of the Commission’s rules to allow any move of three seconds or less without approval.
Focusing on that rule, Common Frequency contends the language is “vague” and “inexact,”
and that it did not intend to violate the rule, but interpreted it as excluding all location changes of three seconds or less from the requirement of obtaining Commission consent. “Indeed, Licensee argues that the three-second language would be redundant if permits were necessary for smaller moves,” Shuldiner says. “Licensee misunderstands this rule.”
What did Common Frequency get wrong? “The three-second language in section 73.1690(b)(2) addresses situations in which a station is not physically moving to a new location or changing licensed parameters,” Shuldiner explains. “It pertains only to correction of inaccurate coordinates for an existing, authorized location.”
Thus, he concludes, “This case involves a station relocation rather than a correction of an error in coordinates.”
And, based on Shuldiner’s interpretation of the FCC’s rules, KQCF’s license expired on Nov. 1, 2023.
Could reinstatement of the KQCF license be warranted? Shuldiner and the Audio Division considered it on its own motion. But, the conclusion is, no, it is not warranted on the grounds that, even if tree-to-tree, such a move cannot be.
