The FCC just announced today that they’d levied $7,000 fines against several college radio stations. The crime wasn’t anything salacious like playing songs with bad words. In fact, it’s much more embarrassing as it was a “failure to timely file renewal application,” which in turn led to “unauthorized operation” of said stations.
This is a big bummer for these stations and it’s sad to see that nobody was keeping track of important FCC deadlines at these stations. Elmira College radio station WECW was actually 3 years late in renewing their license! They’re pretty lucky that they were able to actually retain their license. I guess the FCC does have a heart.
The other renegade college station was Corning Community College radio station WCEB. A handful of other (non-college) stations received a similar fine.