RadioInsight - FCC Report 2/12: FCC Upholds Kentucky AM License Cancellation

The FCC has upheld the deletion of 710 WEKC Williamsburg KY.

Owner Gerald Parks filed a Petition for Reconsideration on in April 2022 after the station’s was cancelled in August 2020 for failing to file a license renewal application. The renewal of the station’s previous license renewal application in 2012 was still being withheld due to lack of compliance with the Public File Rule and a red light delinquency of unpaid regulatory fees. The agency had told Parks in 2017 he must pay the fees and amend the application to have the previous renewal granted following the end of its investigation, which he never did. WEKC then failed to file its 2020 renewal application by the April 1 deadline and was notified the license would be cancelled on August 1 if no application was filed.

In March 2022, following Parks’ legal counsel contacting the FCC staff, the 2012 renewal was reinstated and granted (albeit for the expired term) though the license itself was not reactivated. Parks then filed the petition for reconsideration stating that the FCC erred in reinstating and granting the 2012 renewal but not also simultaneously rescinding the cancellation of WEKC’s license. The FCC in its ruling noted that Parks would still have been required to seek reconsideration of the cancelled license within thirty days of its public notice in August 2020, which was not done making the act final as of 9/15/2020. It also stated that Parks’ arguments regarding the 2012 Renewal Application do not alter the finality of the license cancellation because the status of the 2012 Renewal Application had no bearing on the 2020 cancellation of his license for failure to file a 2020 renewal application.

Parks lastly protested the March 2022 reactivation of the 2012 renewal and lack of a public notice for it. The FCC admitted that the reactivation was erroneous a ministerial action triggered by the cancellation of the Station’s license stating, “staff properly dismissed that application in 2020 because the Station’s license had expired on August 1, 2020, because he failed to file a renewal application for the August 1, 2020 to August 1, 2028 renewal term. Upon the cancellation of the Station’s license, the 2012 Renewal Application became moot because there was no license to renew.”

The FCC has added seventeen vacant allotments back into the FM Table of Allotments after previous licenses or CPs were cancelled.

The allocations being re-added to be made available in a future auction are: