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LPTV Broadcasters, Media Bureau Reach $1.5 Million Settlement Over Station Moves

The FCC Media Bureau reached a $1.5 million settlement with commonly controlled companies that used minor modification rules to move low-power TV stations from their original communities of license to bigger markets, said a consent decree Tuesday. DTV America, Tiger Eye Broadcasting, King Forward and Tiger Eye Licensing also must relinquish more than 20 licenses and modify numerous other licenses. Several pending station applications from the broadcasters will also be dismissed.

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The companies affected are small businesses with a handful of employees, but the fine is close to that assessed on the much larger Securus (see 1710300065), said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald, who represented DTV America during part of the proceeding. The money and requirement to give up station authorizations will curtail the firms' growth, he said. “These are authorizations that the FCC itself granted, apparently without observing multiple site changes that must have been in front of the FCC’s own face in the CDBS and LMS licensing systems but that the FCC now rejects,” Tannenwald said of the Consolidated Database and License Management systems. “The money that the FCC will collect could have been used to build over a dozen new stations.”

The companies own hundreds of LPTV licenses and construction permits and are controlled by John Kyle II, the decree said. Kyle used the 2009 rural LPTV filing window to receive the rights to construct hundreds of LPTV stations but, according to the consent decree, didn't build permanent stations on the vast majority. Temporary broadcast facilities were erected at many sites, then the companies applied for minor modification applications to move 30 miles away, repeating the pattern to relocate the stations from rural underserved areas to higher population ones that were specifically barred during the filing window, the consent decree said. April-September 2016, one LPTV station in Montgomery, Alabama, used four minor modification applications to move 114 miles from its original location 155 miles outside Mobile, to 44 miles away, it said. “An outside third party” alerted the FCC that no transmission equipment or antenna structures were present at many of the authorized sites, the decree said. “Licensees’ practices had the ultimate effect of relocating stations to locations in excess of 30 miles from their originally authorized location and, given the facts, would have more appropriately been filed as major modifications.” Licenses remaining under Kyles’ control are to be transferred to HC2 Broadcasting, a third party that wasn’t aware of the station moves. HC2 agreed in June to buy a majority interest in DTV America. The Media Bureau approved that deal Tuesday.