Four St. Louis area stations are on the verge of deletion or forced sale as the FCC’s Administrative Law Judge dismissed the 2012 license renewals for Entertainment Media Trust’s 1190 KQQZ Fairview Heights IL, 1430 KZQZ St. Louis, 1490 KFTK East St. Louis IL, and 1510 WQQW Highland IL for failure to prosecute.
The stations were acquired by the trust between 2006 and 2012. A petition to deny was filed for their 2012 license renewals in which local resident Mark Kern stated that the trust was being run by Bob Romanik, despite he being ineligible to hold an FCC license as a convicted felon (obstruction of justice and bank fraud).
The FCC concluded in a previous investigation that Romanik provided all of the funds for the acquisition of the stations, but while not listed as a party in any FCC filing they supported Kern’s claim that Romanik held de facto control over the stations including negotiating an LMA agreement for 1490 KFTK with Emmis Communications (and now Entercom). The FCC stated that Entertainment Media Trust, which also operates as Insane Broadcasting Company, failed or was inable to provide responsive information to the agency and is setting up the hearing to establish whether there has been an undisclosed de facto transfer of control of the Stations to Romanik, EMT engaged in misrepresentation and/or lack of candor in its applications and other communications with the Commission, or if the Trust shields Romanik or the Trust’s beneficiaries from holding attributable interests in the Stations under the Commission’s ownership attribution policies.
Today’s ruling comes after trustee Dennis Watkins failed to make an appearance before the court on multiple occasions after first attempting to take the trust into Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings. Watkins finally submitted a pleading in January that the judge considered to be procedurally and substantively deficient. The judge then ordered Entertainment Media Trust to show cause by February 10 why the applications should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute, which he did not respond to.
While today’s decision also dismisses the previous grant of a CP for 102.9 W275CS Highland IL to rebroadcast 1510 WQQW it does not yet delete the licenses. The FCC must still rule on whether they will be deleted or a sale will be forced. In 2005, convicted child molester Doug Lane was forced to sell his three Scranton/Wilkes-Barre PA licenses with all proceeds going to local charities establishing precedent.
