A trio of tower owner/operators have been nailed by the FCC Enforcement Bureau for violations pertaining to that part of their business.
Each company is facing between $6K and $8K in penalties, despite some deductions allowed by the FCC for general past compliance with the rules and regulations.
Kemp Broadcasting in Moapa NV was one of them. It was caught with lighting outages.
It was originally hit with a $14K fine. $10K of that was for the initial discovery of the outage by the FCC. It came back and found the problem still existed, resulting in another $4K, but Kemp was able to demonstrate that it had hired contractors and had been working to repair the problem immediately upon the first notice of violation.
The FCC took that into account and not only returned the fine to the original $10K total, it knocked off another $2K for general compliance, resulting in an $8K fine.
Ohana Media Group of Anchorage AK was another that also had lighting outages.
It was hit with a $10K fine. However, it was able to prove that it had inspected the tower and found no problems just days before the FCC’s finding, and the FCC took $2K off in recognition of Ohana’s good faith effort to stay on top of tower compliance. And Ohana received another $2K deduction for general compliance, resulting in a $6K fine at the end of the day.
The third was Duhamel Broadcasting Enterprises of Rapid City SD. It mistakenly believed it had FAA approval to leave the middle tower in a three tower array unlit.
Mistakes are not an excuse in FCC dealings, and a $10K fine was the result of the infraction. But like the others, Duhamel had a good record and received a $2K discount, taking the fine down to $8K.
