WNGY-AM Babylon NY, serving the Nassau-Suffolk market, had the misfortune to suffer a visit from an FCC agent at a time when licensee Multicultural Radio Broadcasting had it at offices in nearby New York City. But even though staffers rushed to return it to the station, it was still found to be wanting.
The FCC agent offered to wait for the file, and MRB managed to get it to the station in an hour and a half. But upon inspection, the agent found that the most recent issues/programs list contained therein dated back to 1999.
MRB said it had been running such programming in its latest license term, which began 10/19/07, but hadn’t kept records of them in a way that could be properly kept in the file. It eventually did get them into a proper format.
However, the FCC noted that the file is supposed to be available at the station at all times, saying its agent should not have had to wait even 90 minutes. And there was no getting around the wide gap in issues/programs lists, nor was it sufficient to put them together after the fact.
The FCC determined that the fine for a public file violation applied: $10K.
