On September 12, 2007, the FCC has issued a Notice of Violation (NoV) to Vida Abundante, licensee of KJVA-LP in San Bernardino.
The NoV states that the station was operating at an unauthorized location, operated with an output power far exceeding what was authorized and with a high-gain antenna thus resulting in an effective radiated power (ERP) of 2,900 watts that far exceeded the allowable ERP of 100 watts for LPFM stations.
Vida has the usual 20 days to respond to the NoV to explain each violation and what corrective actions are being taken to correct the violations.
In 2003, REC filed a Petition to Deny against the applications of Vida Abundante stemming from the filing of multiple applications in the window. During the window, applications were filed for both the 94.3 and 105.5 mutual exclusive (MX) groups. REC later withdrew the Petition to Deny in a mutual agreement with Vida's consulting engineer.
REC will be watching this case to see what type of a forfeiture is proposed for this type of egregious unauthorized operation.
While Vida's operations do not represent the behavior of most LPFM stations, REC does advise LPFM stations to conduct self-inspections to assure compliance with all FCC rules. While this type of behavior happens in the commercial FM world too, it is very important that our stations stay compliant, especially with our currently rocky relations with the NAB and those they can lobby, especially in light of legislation to expand the availability of the service.
