Radio stations to be located in Waterville?

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:36:10 -0500, "Doug Drown" <revdoug1@verizon.net> said:

> Rick Davis is GM of what I think is still called Mountain Wireless:  WSKW
> (AM) and WFMX (FM) in Skowhegan, and WCTB (FM) which is licensed for some
> strange reason to Fairfield.

There's nothing strange about WCTB being licensed to Fairfield.[1] The
FCC gives a preference to applications (and allocations rulemakings)
that represent the "first local service" to a particular community.
This is interpreted ridiculously literally: a community is said to
have "local service" if and only if there is another station whose
community of license is that exact community, down to the spelling.
(A petitioner must still demonstrate that a proposed community is a
bona fide "community" as the FCC defines it, but that is not a high
bar to jump.)  Whether there is another station that *in reality*
serves that community, or whether the proposed station would actually
do so, is not considered.  (This is related to the way you get
stations on Cape Cod licensed both to Barnstable and to Hyannis [a
fire district in Barnstable], or to Harwich and Harwichport.)

-GAWollman

[1] By a curious coincidence, one of my coworkers is from Fairfield.