http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getimportletter_exh.cgi?import_letter_id=26574
Following the information in the letter (just issued a few weeks ago), back in 2005, Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire made the mistake of volunteering on their renewal application that their “Public Inspection” file from 2000-2002 was missing programming lists. The FCC fined the College owned, student run station $10,000.
The “Public Inspection” file is FCC bullshit when they only ask to see when they want to shut someone down. This is a fucking *college* station run by students, and this is from 10 years ago. The college appealed the fine and the FCC just granted them no leniency for it being a college station of a voluntary admission of a problem by people who are no longer there.
The college is small – around 1100 students, 2/3 of whom are female.
WSCS is operated by the “Radio Club” – it isn’t even a station meant to teach people how to get jobs in radio. It’s a place where college kids just play music, heard by 2 or 3 people in the dorms. It’s 250 watts, which reaches no further than the town of New London, New Hampshire, that exists only because the college is there.
As an aside, this is an excellent example of the “High Tuition, High Aid” college tuition model. Annual tuition is a shocking $36,000 for what appears to be a pretty mediocre college – they accept 80% of the people who apply and doesn’t look at SAT scores. It has one employee for about every 3 students. 87% of the students receive financial aid. On average, students get $14,000 knocked off the list price, $7,000 in loans and $4000 in federal grants. [source]
Why would the FCC want to shut down a station like this? I admittedly don’t know much about the FM band broadcast licensing scheme, but I can’t imagine what kind of benefit there would be in this.
I didn’t research it, but while it is in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire, FM is given adjacent channel protection out to 3 adjacent channels.
EMF (the folks behind Klove and Air1 just paid $14 million for a station on the fringes of New York City. This station is close enough to Boston to be worth $millions to someone if it was shut down.