FCC Upholds Dismissal of 105 LPFM Applications
The full FCC has voted to reject the Weather Alert Radio Network’s appeal of a 2024 Media Bureau decision rejecting 105 WARN applications for low-power FM stations in nine U.S. states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, said an order Thursday. WARN’s applications didn’t meet FCC requirements for a public safety radio service, and it didn’t provide any documentation that it had been in contact with state, local and national public safety entities, the order said. “Because WARN had not established that a public safety organization had officially authorized it to provide a public safety radio service on its behalf in the relevant proposed service area,” it didn’t meet the agency’s requirements that it have jurisdiction in its service area.
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WARN had argued that the FCC hasn’t formally defined "jurisdiction," and that the bureau was acting ad hoc when it denied the applications, but the FCC rejected that argument. “To the contrary, the Bureau’s determination is supported by the language of the rule itself and consistent with the ordinary meaning of the term ‘jurisdiction,’” the order said. “We uphold the Bureau’s determination that WARN’s unsubstantiated assertions of jurisdiction in the proposed service areas deserved no weight.”