Indiana RadioWatch: March 9, 2002

Northwest

A war (of words) at least, is brewing in the Windy City. In the left corner...the larger, mightier WTTW, venerable PBS affiliate for more than four decades. In the right corner...the rimshot WYIN (Channel 56, Gary).

WYIN has filed with the FCC to move transmitter sites from south of Merrillville to a new transmitter site (and location, for them) on top of Chicago's Sears Tower.

WTTW, along with The City Colleges of Chicago's WYCC, object to this move because that would create a third PBS competitor in Chicago. Donations and viewership are the main reasons for the objection. Also factored in is that since WYIN isn't an official Chicago TV station, they pay much less in membership dues to PBS to run their programming.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times' Robert Feder, Channel 56 maintains that they will continue to actively target the Gary/northwest Indiana area. For example, their Board of Directors will remain comprised of northwest Indiana residents, and their nightly newscast, primarily covering northwest Indiana, will remain.

Westcentral

Another chapter in the saga of Michael Rice and Contemporary Broadcasting is written as the FCC denies an application to extend his ownership and operation rights. All of Rice's stations (among them WBOW, WBUZ, and WZZQ) remain silent. Amongst the FCC's remarks...

"Rice's Application for Review, like his Petition, assumes without discussion that there is some legal basis for permitting Rice to "retain his radio properties" (Pet. at 34), despite the fact that the Commission has revoked the licenses for those stations in an action that became final and no longer subject to judicial review before Rice filed the petition at issue here. In this regard, the application for review is contrary to well-settled principles of finality."

"Since the revocation of the Rice authorizations is final, Rice has nothing to "retain." We have reviewed the numerous claims in Rice's petition and lengthy attachments and supplements, and we are not persuaded that anything has been presented that suggests that there was any injustice or fraud in the proceedings that led to the revocation of these licenses. Indeed, we find nothing in the petition that would have warranted reopening the hearing if Rice's claims had been timely raised."

"The petition points to no evidence that was not known to Rice while this matter was still before the Commission, or could not have been easily discovered by him with reasonable diligence. Moreover, Rice's claim that he in essence lacked effective assistance of counsel, which forms the basis for virtually all of his arguments, appears to be merely second-guessing about an unsuccessful legal strategy that Rice and his companies pursued in earlier proceedings."

Want to see the full report?

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-02-65A1.txt (ASCII)
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-02-65A1.doc (MS Word)

Country/WWSY (95.9fm, Seelyville) flipped formats at Noon on Friday to Hot AC as "Y-96 Energy Radio."

Southeast

Calvary Satellite Network's W216BW (91.1fm, Hamburg) flips dial positions to 91.5fm and calls to W218BY.

Southwest

Classic Rock/WKRI (94.9fm, Mount Carmel, Illinois) flips format to Soft Rock as "The River."

That's it for this issue. See you in a week!

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