WPNI, 1430, Amherst, MA

[Scott Fybush]

On 6/13/2014 9:38 PM, Garrett Wollman wrote:

> The license will only evaporate if they keep the station silent.  If
> they want to hang onto the license until the FCC approves the sale,
> they are free to broadcast something, even if it's just a loop of
> "Programming on WPNI Amherst is suspended pending sale of the station"
> over and over again.  If the license isn't even worth that much, I
> hope they got enough of a deposit from Dodge to cover their legal
> costs.

It is very rare that I get the opportunity to correct Garrett, so I'll 
take full advantage of the opportunity <g>

There is now solid FCC precedent that says that when you return a silent 
station to the air, you have to do so with something that can be 
construed as actual programming. The test case was a UHF TV station in 
northern Alabama that came back for a day with a test pattern. The FCC 
ruled that WYLE had not, in fact, "returned to the air" and deleted the 
license.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-576A1.pdf

You might be able to play music interspersed with legal IDs. If I were 
running WPNI, though, I wouldn't come back with a "programming is 
suspended" loop.

s