Brian Dogde slapped by FCC, finally

[Paul B. Walker, Jr.]

The WWNH site is easy to find if you know what to look for, but still hard,
if that makes sense. It's on Knox Marsh Road, Route 155 just as you get
into Madury from Dover. It's so close to dover, that you could use 284 Knox
Marsh Road, Madury or 284 Knox Marsh Road Dover as an address.

There was a sign at the end of the road that leads up to WWNH. Theres a
landscaping company of some kind next to the radio station and to the right
of their property is a dirt road that elads up a few hundred feet to a
driveway you turn right into and that clearing back on the woods is WWNH.
You will never see the 1340 tower from the road

Dodge is a douchecanoe, an asshat.. he's unfit to own gas stations let
alone radio stations.

I worked for him for a few months and the stuff he told me, the stuff he
believed to be ok/legal with regards to radio stations was beyond
incredulous.

The only other person who really knew Dodge even better then me, Ernie
Rice, is dead.

Paul


On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 9:55 AM, Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org>
wrote:

> 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
>
>