KRNW-FM Chillicothe MO, licensed to the Board of Regents, Northwest Missouri State University, tried to piggyback its license renewal on one filed for its flagship KXCV-FM Maryville MO – a no-go with the FCC. As a result the remedial application was late enough that the station ended up running without authorization.
The FCC late renewal cops pulled the station over and hit it with the usual $7K fine.
NSMU asked for leniency based on two things – its good faith effort to fix the problem and recognition of the fact that it is noncommercial.
The FCC said that in this case, the station did take steps to bring its license into compliance of its own accord, once it became aware that there was a problem, and for that it received a good faith reduction of the penalty of $2K, bringing the assessment down to $5K.
However, the FCC said long-standing precedent prevents it from granting further relief simply because of a station’s noncommercial status. So $5K is it.
