The FCC Media Bureau approved the renewal of Calvary Educational Broadcasting Network, Inc.’s (CEB) broadcast license of noncommercial educational KOKS (FM), Poplar Bluff, MO with conditions. The agency denied the objection of a resident.
The bureau noted that the station has “a long history of rule violations,” beginning in 1989 and continuing to varying degrees for nearly 30 years while CEB was managed by the Stewart family, who are now dead. The most significant violation involved its tower, notes the bureau in its decision.
The agency says KOKS failed to correct what it calls “extensive FM blanketing interference to surrounding homes.” The FCC describes the phenomenon as “when a strong signal from a nearby broadcast tower can completely overwhelm receivers in the FM and TV bands.”
Commission rules require stations to remedy the interference, but the bureau says the Stewarts lacked “the technical expertise and financial resources” to fix the problem. Because of the interference, some residents, including the woman who complained, Doris Smith, couldn’t receive interference-free broadcast signals and paid for cable or satellite TV instead. Smith sought reimbursement for those costs.
In 1994, the bureau determined that KOKS failed to fix the interference, and didn’t reimburse its neighbors. Saying that the station was not operating in the public interest, it held up license renewals that CEB filed in 1995, 2005, and 2012.
Through inspections more recently, the FCC found other violations, including tower lighting outages that hadn’t been reported to the FAA, reduced power without authority, lack of station logs, and an incomplete public inspection file.
In 2020, a new proposed CEB board and the bureau signed a consent decree in which CEB admitted to past violations and agreed to resolve the issues. That’s when the bureau okayed CEB’s application to transfer control to the new board.
CEB agreed to downgrade the station’s class and power in order to address the blanketing interference, to place a prominent notice on its web site informing the public of its responsibility for addressing interference and to resolve any such complaints. It also agreed to buy a new transmitter and hire consultants to remediate tower lighting on an ongoing basis. At the time, the FCC said it normally would have imposed a civil penalty. It didn’t do so in this case because CEB submitted documentation proving its inability to pay.
The station’s reports show it monitored tower lighting during the probationary period. Upon noticing a problem, it notified the FAA and corrected it within FAA deadlines. CEB repainted the tower during the probationary period for roughly $10,000.
Now, the bureau has decided that KOKS has met the requirements for license renewal, and satisfied the Consent Decree requirements by taking “significant corrective action.” It considered and dismissed Smith’s objection without mandating that CEB reimburse her for the satellite service she purchased. Smith claimed she was due for reimbursement under FCC rules. The FCC said that’s not true. A station must remedy interference, generally accomplished through an engineering fix.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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