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“Best of Show Up Close” is a series about participants in Radio World’s annual Best of Show at NAB Awards program.
MaxxKonnect nominated the MaxxKonnect Wireless LTE internet link. MaxxKonnect Wireless acts as reliable link for remote productions or remote sites. It is designed to work right out of the box. MaxxKonnect has negotiated priority service deals with AT&T and Verizon to ensure service throughout most of the country.
We asked MaxxKonnect President and CEO Josh Bohn for more information.
Radio World: What is MaxxKonnect?
Josh Bohn: MaxxKonnect Wireless is prioritized LTE internet service designed for broadcast applications. We work on the Verizon and AT&T networks (T-Mobile is coming soon) which gives us the flexibility to give customers the carrier which works better in their area. Each one of our SIMs comes with priority on the carrier network, plus a true public static IP address, which is crucial for most broadcast applications.
RW: What inspired its creation?
Bohn: Back in 2014, I had a group of stations I was taking care of. I had one station out in the woods, about 14 miles from the nearest cell tower — and two and half hours from my house. The phone company couldn’t even keep a landline into it. So, it would go off the air, someone would call me and say it was off and I’d call the remote. This call was answered by a “this line is currently out of service” message, which was followed by me cussing for a bit, then making the long drive out to the woods. I’d arrive, push Plate ON on the transmitter, cuss at is some more, then drive back. A five-hour round tripper to literally push a button. After about the umpteenth time, I finally said, “There has to be a better way …”
[Read: Best of Show Up Close: Davicom Cortex 320]
We tried a regular LTE wireless modem and SIM into a Cradlepoint router, which is a fairly standard setup. This succeeded in getting an internet connection into the place, albeit with some external antennas. But it still wasn’t very good. And since there wasn’t a static IP — or even a public IP — we had to resort to a PC at the site and LogMeIn for any kind of site control or monitoring. This setup worked, but was clunky. The PC would update and cause problems, or wouldn’t reboot after a power fail, etc., etc. It was during this stage that I started negotiations with the carriers for what would become MaxxKonnect.
Once I was able to successfully negotiate our service with the carriers, we beta tested for over three years before ever introducing the product to the market. I wanted to be 100% confident that this service would be reliable and robust for broadcasters in as many areas as possible. We debuted it at NAB2018 as an aside to our main showing (which flopped, BTW). It caught the eye of Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack. Since then, our user base has been steadily growing.
RW: What kind of questions did booth visitors ask about MaxxKonnect?
Bohn: The thing we heard the most was, “You can’t do this. This won’t work.” Well, I assure you, yes we can do it — and yes, it does work! People were somewhat skeptical of the priority part of the service, but we’ve got lots of test cases to prove it. Another was, “Well, I can get this from Verizon or AT&T tomorrow.” No, unfortunately you can’t. This service took me years to develop and isn’t available to the average person.
People also asked about the commitment. That’s one of the cool things — there is no commitment! If you get the service, try it and decide for whatever reason you don’t want it anymore, you can cancel! No fees, no arguments, no transferring between 12 departments. Just give us 30 days’ notice and pay your last bill — and that’s it. And we all stay friends. My goal for this was to make it easy for broadcasters to get the connectivity they needed for transmitter sites, remotes, etc.
They also asked about hardware. We do offer hardware from Cradlepoint and Pepwave, depending on your needs. A lot of customers like that they can order a complete package from us. When it arrives, it’s already programmed and setup, so all the customer has to do it take it out of the box, plug it in and — Voila! — they have internet. But, another cool feature is that our service is compatible with basically any LTE data hardware! Whether it’s a Comrex Connect modem, a Tieline modem, a Pantech modem or a Cradlepoint — MaxxKonnect works with it. As long as you can change the APN information to our private and/or semiprivate APN, you can use any hardware. We are currently testing with smart devices (phones, tablets, etc.) for data use with no voice or text/SMS. Preliminary tests show promise for use with audio programs like LuciLive, Skype and others. This would simplify remotes even more for some customers.
We’ve also got a POTS replacement service we’re starting to roll-out called MaxxPhone. It’s a low-cost way to get a POTS line for your remote control via your MaxxKonnect internet connection.
RW: Who would use MaxxKonnect?
Bohn: Anyone that needs internet service, basically! MaxxKonnect is usually deployed at remote sites where traditional internet delivery isn’t an option, and for remotes. The priority on the network is key for remotes with large crowds of people. It cuts through all the bandwidth clutter and lets your broadcast continue when 15,000 people show up with their 1.5 devices each. I’ve also got customers who are using it as a backup to their IP radio system at their transmitter sites; others who are using it as an emergency backup at their studios to keep their IP phone systems alive when their main internet fails; and others using it as primary STLs with their favorite hardware codec. A MaxxKonnect is an extremely useful tool to have around your station for all kinds of solve all kinds of connectivity needs!
RW: Why would someone use MaxxKonnect when wireless service is available everywhere?
Bohn: We get asked this a lot. Think of it this way — when you show up to a concert or a fair or a race or whatever, and you try to do something on your phone, what happens? Typically nothing. The cell towers or the venue Wi-Fi is so overloaded with everyone doing Facebook Live, Instagram, etc., that you can’t even load a web page, let alone do a broadcast. The prioritization of the MaxxKonnect service puts your connection on a different part of the carrier network, which bypasses all of the congestion in the public space, and lets you connect to do your broadcast reliably. Now, we can’t guarantee anything 100% — no one can. Internet and carrier anomalies do happen. We’ve had a few places (mostly in extremely rural parts of New England) where the service just won’t work because the carriers never built out the back end. In those cases, the customer just sent their router back and we refunded them. But, the MaxxKonnect service has been successfully used multiple times at major music festivals around the country, as well as concerts, SEC football games, the Regions Tradition golf tournament, major fairs and the Indianapolis 500 (with their 300,000+ attendees.)
RW: How much does MaxxKonnect cost? Is there a service fee?
Bohn: Yes. The monthly cost varies based on the amount of data you expect to need. We can do a 1 GB plan for as low as $56 and go all the way up to 100 GB plans. Our most popular plans are 10 GB. These range from $109 per month to $129 per month, depending on the carrier. Another awesome feature of the MaxxKonnect service is if you hit your “data cap,” nothing happens to your data stream. We won’t throttle you or turn you off. You just get billed for the overage. Broadcasters need reliability and known connectivity, not another headache of wondering if their station or broadcast is going to go off because they exceeded their data cap.
Also, if you purchase multiple plans on the same tier on the same carrier, their data pools together into on big “data bucket.” For example, if you get six 10 GB plans on Verizon for your company or station, you don’t have six individual 10 GB devices which are subject to overages after 10 GB. You’ve actually got 60 GB of total data that can be used across all of the devices. If one device uses 45 GB and the others each use 2 GB, you’re still under your cap. It’s great way to maximize value for a large scale deployment across a company or group.
RW: What does MaxxKonnect consist of?
Bohn: MaxxKonnect is a service primarily. You must get the MaxxKonnect SIM from Bohn Broadcast — you can’t get this directly from the carriers. MaxxKonnect becomes your ISP. You need some type of compatible hardware — which can be provided by the customer or by us. And that’s really it. It’s very simple from a deployment standpoint.
RW: Is there a 5G version in the works?
Bohn: Most likely, yes. We are currently able to achieve the reliability that we need using the existing 4G LTE technology. However, as 5G continues to roll out, our service will continue to evolve to utilize new technology to maintain our necessary level of reliability.
The Future Best of Show Awards program honors and helps promote outstanding new products exhibited at industry conventions like the spring NAB Show. Exhibitors pay a fee to enter; not all entries win. Watch for more coverage of participating products soon. To learn about all of the nominees and winners, read the 2019 Best of Show Program Guide.
The post Best of Show Up Close: MaxxKonnect Wireless appeared first on Radio World.
This informative piece ran in Radio a year after the 9/11 collapse of the World Trade Center towers and the broadcast facility located there.
With tremendous height and clear coverage of Manhattan, the World Trade Center towers were home to four FM radio transmitters. On Sept. 11, 2001, WKCR, WKTU, WNYC and WPAT were not only faced with the difficulties inherent in covering news from a city under attack, but also they lost their transmission capabilities and equipment, just when they were most needed. Twelve months after the World Trade Center collapse, none of the stations have fully recovered.
Backup plansThe terrorist attacks have forced New York stations to re-examine their emergency plans. There is now more variety in the mix of New York City backup locations and fully redundant transmission systems. For the four World Trade Center FM stations, emergency plans no longer mean simply a low-power transmitter for equipment failures. Backup systems were not considered of high importance before September, but “now you’re criminally negligent if you don’t have backup systems in place,” said WPAT Chief Engineer Mike Toko.
When WNYC constructed its original transmission systems, the cost of a full-power backup system was considered excessive for its needs. “Who thought that the World Trade Center was going to collapse? That tells you anything can happen and you have to weigh the ‘what if’ scenarios against real world costs,” WNYC Chief Engineer Steve Shultis said. For some stations, the cost of an extended outage may weigh more than the initial outlay on a backup location. “You spend a million dollars to build a backup system but what’s the ROI? For us the site has more than paid for itself,” said Josh Hadden, Clear Channel’s New York director of engineering.
The full economic consequences of the damage from Sept. 11 may never be known, but New York broadcasters lost significant revenue while they were off the air, in addition to transmission equipment. Long-term solutions may be years in the making, but a review of station emergency preparedness plans should be something every station undertakes regularly.
The site at 4 Times Square was built as Clear Channel’s backup facility. It is now the main site for WKTU.
Photo by John Lyons WKTU, 103.5 FM
Clear Channel’s WKTU was the first of the affected stations to return to the air. It also was the only one of the four stations with a backup system located elsewhere. The World Trade Center was the site of numerous television transmissions. Between 1999 and 2001, construction and testing of the DTV antenna system on the towers meant regular disruptions for radio broadcasters. To cope with the ongoing outages, Clear Channel built a backup transmission system in Times Square. “When the TV stations at the World Trade Center were upgrading their DTV projects, we used Times Square every night,” said Josh Hadden, director of engineering, Clear Channel New York. “That meant we were best positioned of all the FMs, of the stations on the World Trade Center, in that we already had a backup site in Manhattan.” Within minutes of the collapse, WKTU was able to switch to the backup site, covering 80% of ERP at 8 kW.
Within the week, WKTU requested and received an STA from the FCC for upgraded power from its backup site. The station now operates at 17 kW at Times Square. While WKTU plans to keep the Times Square site as a backup, it has filed an application with the FCC for a master antenna license at the Empire State Building. Hadden hopes to receive the license this year but spacing issues with a Class A station on Long Island could delay the approval. The FCC is requiring all the stations from the World Trade Center to follow normal application procedures.
Harris supplied the temporary transmitter that WKCR used from the roof of a campus dorm.
Photo by Wayne Gignac. WKCR, 89.9 FM
Next to return to the air was Columbia University’s WKCR. When the towers collapsed, WKCR lost its primary and backup systems. Shortly after the disaster, Station Engineer Rich Koziol ordered an emergency package from Harris for WKCR and arranged similar orders for WPAT and WNYC. The 1 kW Quest transmitter was installed on the roof of a campus dorm by Sept. 13. Unfortunately, the station now reaches only 9 percent of its original audience.
For five years, WKCR had operated out of nearby Riverside Church. In September 2001, the station planned to move back to the Columbia University campus into a brand new digital studio. “We spent a half million dollars [on the studios] and had planned fund raising for Sept. 28 but with 9% power couldn’t do it, so now we owe the university,” said Koziol.
WKCR received insurance funding and a government grant to build a new transmitter site, but it is still trying to negotiate an alternative location for the station. “The best site right now is Empire, but everyone is trying to get there,” said Koziol, “there is no electrical, no room and the mast is full, so we chose not to do Empire, as we were such a small player.”
There is a mast on the tower of Riverside Church, where WKCR formerly had its studios. Originally used by WRVR, the church antenna was abandoned many years ago and Koziol is hopeful the FCC will grant temporary authority for WKCR to transmit from the site. “With 26 stations we could interfere with in the educational band, any move requires a major review of short spacing,” said Koziol. A study of the impact of the move to Riverside has been sent to the FCC and WKCR is waiting on the results. After FCC approvals are received, the station expects to be running from the church mast within 40 days.
The WPAT installation at Times Square is also used by sister station WSKQ.
Photo by John Lyons WPAT 93.1 FM
Spanish-language broadcaster WPAT erected a 1 kW transmitter at the Empire State Building after losing its primary and backup equipment at the World Trade Center. “We were down for 59 hours and 48 minutes, not that I was counting,” said Chief Engineer Mike Toko. Though lower in height, and with less power at the Empire State Building, WPAT was still able to reach 75% of its audience.
Once emergency transmissions had been established at the Empire State Building, WPAT began constructing an alternate site in Times Square. “At Times Square we have 90% coverage, we’ve only been on a couple of months but it’s looking good and sounding good,” said Toko. During the next six months, the station plans to construct a full-power main site at the Empire State Building and use Times Square as a backup.
WNYC installed a full-power facility at Times Square.
Photo courtesy of WNYC WNYC 93.9 FM
The last of the four FMs to return to the air was WNYC. Immediately after the collapse of the World Trade Center, WNYC worked to maintain transmission on its AM facility in New Jersey. Once the AM signal was stabilized, WNYC began restoring its FM signal, placing a 1 kW signal at the Empire State Building. “Empire was a shock,” said Chief Engineer Steve Shultis. “With low power at Empire we got the whole east side back, which we had lost 15 years ago when we moved to the World Trade Center. We had so much shadow [from the World Trade Center site] that even the 1 kW [on the Empire State Building] was an improvement.”
WNYC spent the next six months building a full-power facility in Times Square. “Times Square was quicker for full power because the combiner system was plug and play, it just took a couple overnights to install,” Shultis said. Now in the process of building a full-power facility at the Empire State Building, the station soon expects to have a full-power main facility at the Empire State Building and a full-power backup at Times Square. Shultis said, “My goal is 9/11 this year, as that would be a fitting ending to that calendar cycle.”
Stephanie Snyder is an independent streaming media consultant.
Timeline
Sept. 11, 2001
Sept. 13, 2001
Sept. 14, 2001
Sept. 16, 2001
The post From the Archives: Rebuilding Radio Stations Despite the Rubble – Post 9/11 appeared first on Radio World.
Nautel has announced the hiring of Joe Cheong to serve as its new regional sales manager for the Asia Pacific region.
Joe CheongCheong joins Nautel having most recently served as the deputy director of the Communications Engineering Business Unit for NCS in Singapore. Previous experience also includes management positions at Infowave and CET Technologies (now ST Electronics).
[Read: Nautel Displays Latest MW, FM Transmitters]
“We are pleased to welcome Joe to the Nautel team,” said Kevin Rodgers, Nautel’s CEO. “His background in communications, electronics and system integration will be an asset to our many partners in the region as we continue to support growing broadcast needs in the area.”
Cheong will be based in Singapore.
The post Nautel Names Joe Cheong Asia Pacific Sales Manager appeared first on Radio World.
Podcast network Stitcher recently moved into its new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, building out a 2,000-square-foot production complex comprising three studios, two edit rooms and two isolation booths designed in concert with WSDG Walters-Storyk Design Group. The new facilities have been outfitted to accommodate Stitcher’s typical workflow, which can often involve collaboration between talent, producers and engineers at the company’s offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Studio C at Stitcher StudiosRomina Larregina, partner, director of production at WSDG, reports that her biggest challenge was ensuring consistency between the new studio spaces. “One of the things that Stitcher looked for was identical sound in every room. That was challenging, to make sure that the reverb time was the same in all the studios, even though the shapes, sizes and volumes were different,” she says.
The floating floor, room-within-a-room design provides critical isolation for speech recording, both from the potentially noisy neighborhood, where the company occupies an entire floor in a building overlooking Bryant Park, as well as between studios. To achieve consistent responses within each space, WSDG implemented custom low-frequency absorption, soffits, ceiling treatment and corner treatments to target specific frequencies, says Larregina. WSDG installed RPG’s hybrid BAD diffusion/absorption panels at the listening position in each control room, she adds.
John DeLore, senior production managerAccording to John DeLore, senior production manager at Stitcher’s New York office, the choices of audio technology at the new facility were a combination of recommendations from Larregina and the WSDG staff and from Stitcher’s Los Angeles and New York teams. Key to the company’s content creation workflow is a Dropbox scheme implemented by Dave Seidel, Stitcher lead systems engineer, he says.
Every studio is hooked up to an SNS (Studio Network Solutions) EVO shared storage server hosting Dropbox, DeLore explains. Those Dropbox folders are synchronized everywhere within Stitcher’s network, enabling engineers, producers, hosts and other contributors to collaborate from multiple locations, handing off and updating audio files as work progresses.
While the Stitcher app is one of the preeminent podcast listening platforms — it has been described as the most popular alternative to the default Apple podcast app — Stitcher is also a content network with a large catalog of original programming. Much more than simply spoken word, Stitcher Premium shows such as “Wolverine: The Long Night,” Marvel’s first scripted podcast, and “Stranglers,” a documentary series about the Boston Strangler that DeLore produced, feature layers of sound design and custom music, produced in-house.
“Our belief here is that the future of the medium will mirror TV and film,” says DeLore. “As the marketplace becomes more and more crowded with content, attention to technical and artistic details will be a big part of creating content that stands apart from the rest.”
Voice recording may take place in one room, editing in another and mixing in yet another, so certain pieces of gear are standardized at the new facility and between Stitcher locations. Each of the new control rooms features an Allen & Heath Qu-16 console, the desk of choice at the L.A. facility, DeLore reports. “It has a good reputation, good sound, it’s solidly built and doesn’t crash. We love that it’s got the Qu-Drive function; we can hook up a drive and do a multitrack backup in parallel with Pro Tools,” he says.
Microphones throughout are Shure SM7B dynamics, paired with Cloud Cloudlifter CL-4 mic activators to enhance and boost the signal level going into Pro Tools, without noise or artifacts, says DeLore. “It’s a flat mic, really clear, with no coloration. We have other mics in our closet in case somebody wants to come in and use a U 87 or an RE20.”
Each of the three studio control rooms and the two edit bays also include a pair of arm-mounted SM7s, he says, for added flexibility. Mimicking the company’s West Coast Earwolf studio setup, “The engineer can be on-mic from the control room” if desired, he says. “And if the interviewer wants to engineer, we have mics in the room.”
Conversely, computer screens enable remote operation of Pro Tools from the recording spaces. “The Allen & Heath boards have Bluetooth remote capabilities from a tablet, so we’ve also experimented with that,” says DeLore.
About 75% of sessions involve just a host and a guest, he says, in person or on the phone (the studios are equipped with Telos Hx series telephone hybrid units). For that reason, the control rooms offer two channels of AEA RPQ2 mic preamps. “It’s giving us a little extra juice and a little extra color and warmth,” he says.
All the recording facilities in Stitcher’s new headquarters, including Studio A’s control room, seen here, were designed by Walters-Storyk Design Group.Studio A, a larger space that incorporates an isolation booth and a sound lock, is multiuse. “It’s designed for large ensemble recordings, for original podcast score recording and for doing a live music podcast, hopefully; nobody has cracked that code yet, but it’s going to happen and I’m sure we’ll be in that space.”
Control room A houses an A&H Qu-32, for its extra inputs, and additional outboard, including a Grace Design m103 channel strip. “Whether you’re recording a voice for a spoken word podcast or a musical lead vocalist, we wanted Studio A to have some boutique options in the mic pre department.”
Additional processing for music production includes a Warm Audio Tone Beast, a Foote Control Systems P3S stereo compressor and a Lexicon MX400 reverb. “Lexicon is great and we’re all familiar with it,” says DeLore, whose background includes time working at Right Track Recording in Manhattan, as well as Gimlet Media and WNYC Radio. Since launching the facility, Stitcher has added a Boston upright piano, a drum kit and an Ampeg bass amp, he also reports.
Edit room in Stitcher’s Manhattan officeMonitoring in the studios and edit rooms, on Larregina’s recommendation, includes Neumann KH 120 two-way speakers, while the A Room additionally features a pair of three-way Neumann KH 310 monitors. “At the point of ingest, we’re just listening to voice,” says DeLore, “so we need to be able to hear everything at a good listening volume, and the Neumann is a clean speaker. The 310s are designed to provide a wider sweet spot, which is ideal for podcasts which can have production teams of four to five people who need to all sit in the studio and be able to hear the same mix.” A PreSonus Monitor Station V2 manages source selection and speaker level control in every room.
The studios and control rooms feature Sennheiser headphones. “Sennheiser are the official headphones of Stitcher. As part of that partnership, we also stocked our mic closet with a nice selection of Sennheiser and Neumann microphones.”
In addition to the studios and edit rooms are a pair of iso booths where producers can escape for a mix or playback session. Summing up the entire facility, DeLore notes, “Everything is set up with as much flexibility as we could build into it.”
The post Stitcher’s Flexible New Facility in Manhattan appeared first on Radio World.
At IBC2019, Tieline will unveil the new Gateway IP audio codec, which the company says, is a compact and powerful multichannel IP audio transport solution for radio broadcasters. The Gateway streams up to 16 IP audio channels with support for AES67, AES3 and analog I/O as standard.
Featuring Tieline’s SmartStream PLUS redundant streaming and Fuse-IP data aggregation technologies, Tieline promises the Gateway will “herald a new era in multichannel IP codec streaming.”
Tieline Gateway is suitable for STL, SSL and audio distribution applications, as well as managing multiple incoming remotes at the studio. The compact unit is interoperable with all Tieline IP codecs and compatible over SIP with all EBU N/ACIP Tech 3326 and 3368 compliant codecs and devices.
“The new Gateway codec delivers up to 16 mono channels or eight stereo streams of IP audio in 1RU to increase efficiency and reduce rack space requirements,” said Charlie Gawley, Tieline’s VP Sales APAC/EMEA. “The Tieline Gateway interfaces with legacy analog and AES/EBU sources, as well as newer broadcast plants with AES67 IP audio infrastructure. An optional WheatNet-IP interface will also be also available.”
Configurable through an embedded HTML5 Toolbox Web-GUI interface, the Gateway can also interface with the TieLink Traversal Server for simpler connections and is fully controllable using Tieline’s Cloud Codec Controller.
IBC Stand: 8.E74
Info: www.tieline.com
The post IBC Sneak Peek: Tieline Unveils Gateway Multichannel IP Codec appeared first on Radio World.
The National Association of Broadcasters has completed another step in its process of moving its headquarters closer to Capitol Hill and the thriving Washington neighborhood near Nationals Park baseball stadium and the developing waterfront Wharf area.
But there is still some uncertainty about whether the move will bring it much closer to the Federal Communications Commission’s headquarters, which may be moving, too.
On Monday, papers were filed at the District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds showing that 1M Properties LLC (a wholly-owned subsidiary of NAB) has acquired the 130,000-square-foot building, which is located at 1 M St. SE, for $62.76 million (about $483 per square foot).
[Read: NAB Sells Dupont Circle HQ]
An NAB spokesperson confirmed that the transaction was consummated now because the contractor Monument Realty has completed its work on the building. The interior architecture firm will now handle construction of office spaces, with an eye toward moving into the building in early 2020. The transaction has been in progress for more than four years.
NAB sold its current building near the Dupont Circle area in Washington in March 2018 for $31.6 million, and has leased it since then while awaiting completion of its new headquarters. The new structure has nearly twice the space of NAB’s 50-year old iconic curved building at 1771 N St. NW. For many decades, the NAB offices were about four blocks away from the Federal Communications Commission, until the agency moved in 1997 (after a long controversial delay) to The Portals complex in southwest D.C.
NAB’s new headquarters will put it closer to Capitol Hill and also closer to agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the current FCC offices, although there has been speculation for several years that the FCC is seeking to move from its Portals venue. The FCC has considered a move into a new building just north of the Capitol in a neighborhood called “Swampoodle,” which is the home of several other federal agencies and National Public Radio, among others. The General Services Administration will be involved in any FCC move, and such action appears to be facing the long delays that preceded its 1997 relocation.
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The post NAB Buys New Building For $62.8 Million appeared first on Radio World.
A small Alabama radio station has lost its license for failure to pay late regulatory fees to the FCC.
WGEA(AM), licensed to Shelley Broadcasting Co., is located in Geneva, Ala. Its license was for operation at 1150 kHz, with 1 kW daytime power. This license in fact had been revoked in 2017 and the station apparently has been off the air since, though the FCC briefly reinstated it this summer while the legal case was playing out.
Revocations are rare and considered a big deal; and this new order was signed by the chief of the Media Bureau as well as the managing director of the commission. According to the FCC, WGEA owed regulatory fees for every fiscal year from 2008 to 2016. The commission said it sent earlier letters demanding payment of the debt and said SBC did not respond or pay.
[Read WGEA’s appeal letter to the FCC.]
This June, it issued an order requiring SBC to pay, show cause why it could not, or face revocation for good. The company then told the FCC that it had not paid because the IRS had withheld a sizable refund owed to SBC’s president and his wife since 1987. According to a post on the station’s still-active website, the amount due to them is $2 million.
But the commission now has ruled that the station provided no documentary evidence that SBC itself is financially unable to pay the regulatory fee debt. “In failing to provide the required documentation, SBC has not met its burden of showing extraordinary and compelling circumstances outweighing the public interest to justify a waiver of its outstanding regulatory fee obligations.”
So the commission pulled the license and rejected the station’s renewal application. And, by the way, “We note that this Revocation Order does not relieve SBC of its obligation to pay any debt, including any regulatory fee, or any other financial obligation that is owed or may in the future be owed to the commission.”
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The post FCC Pulls License of Alabama Station a Second Time appeared first on Radio World.
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