Brian Dogde slapped by FCC, finally

[Garrett Wollman]

Scott reported on Monday about an FCC consent decree released last
Thursday between the Media Bureau, Brian A. Dodge, and parties
associated with Dodge.

Apparently the FCC first started having doubts about Dodge's
operations back in the late 1980s, when his "Harvest Broadcasting" was
involved in an applicaton for a new FM in Poughkeepsie.  Questions
were raised then about Harvest's qualifications as a licensee, but the
matter was left unresolved after being designated for a hearing,
because Harvest's application was dismissed for failure to prosecute.

Dodge continued to apply for numerous other authorizations, using a
variety of aliases and front groups, some of the alleged directors of
which were actually dead at the time.  The FCC put a "red light hold"
on his application for a license to cover at WWNH (1340 Madbury), but
some other applications, including numerous translators and two LPFMs,
slipped through by creative use of pseudonyms.

Rather than give Dodge the metaphorical "death penalty", which it
would be fully entitled to do, but which would require substantial
resources to gather evidence and hold hearings before an
administrative law judge, the FCC in the consent decree agrees to let
Dodge keep WWNH and a number of his translators.  Two of his granted
LPFM permits are cancelled, as well as the license to WCKL (560
Catskill), and he must admit wrongdoing and pay a $100,000 fine out of
the sale proceeds of two of his translators.  The remaining translator
licenses are modified to show Dodge as the licensee and given
short-term renewals.

Last time I was in Madbury I went looking for the WWNH CP site and
couldn't find it.  Scott and I saw it back in 1995 on one of our
earliest trips, when it was still on the air.  Dodge still has some
work to do, to convince the FCC that the facilities (if they even
still exist) actually match the original CP, since that's the facility
that the application for a license to cover would authorize.

-GAWollman