The failure to get WJFA(AM) Hilliard FL built in time may have benefitted from an 18 month CP extension, but an application to transfer it came at the very last minute, just as the station became a legal non-entity. Now, the suspension of the extension program due to a recent Third Circuit Court ruling has guaranteed the station will remain a non-entity.
Radio talk show host Chuck Harder was the target of the proposed assignment. He was hoping to get the station from the Dianne Mayfield-Harder Trust.
Harder told the FCC that Mayfield-Harder had suffered both medical and financial setbacks during the period that the CP was alive, preventing its construction. His own attempts to take over the station and attend to its construction were also impaired by health problems of his own.
The application to assign the station to Charles Harder was received by the FCC 12/16/09, the same day the license expired. The application was declared moot since the station no longer existed.
Harder’s subsequent appeal was rejected. The FCC explained that the allocation ceased to exist upon expiration of the CP, and that “…the mere filing of an assignment application is not a basis for additional construction time.”
The FCC noted, just in case there was any further doubt, that its CP extension policy was currently ineffective due to the court action.
The FCC stated that there was one duty remaining pertaining to the station. If the licensee had managed to get a tower up before the CP expired, it was responsible to make sure it was maintained properly so as not to endanger aviation traffic, until it is disassembled.
Hilliard FL is north of Jacksonville near the state’s border with Georgia.
