KMRI Status Update

[David]

There have been a couple of recent developments regarding the status of KMRI. First of all, the FCC has finally granted the remain silent STA filed by the court appointed receiver in April 2021. Second, the FCC database is now showing Jacob Hibbard, the court appointed receiver for AASAA Media, as the licensee. I'm assuming this means that the FCC has also dismissed all the objections filed by or on behalf of Morgan Skinner, which should presumably clear the way for Hibbard and Barry Wood to proceed with their plans to rebuild KMRI's tower and eventually get the station back on the air. Unfortunately, my mobile device is having issues with the FCC database right now, so I don't have links to post for the documentation. If you really want to read them, you can perform a search for "KMRI" at the FCC AM Query website. 🙂

[kenglish]

transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=25405

[CAwasinNJ]

The Remain Silent STA filed in April was granted, however the original more detailed request from March still has not been ruled on so to me this doesn't mean much. The listing showing Hibbard as the licensee I think came from the Administrative Update filing June 3 so nothing to see there either.

YMMV

[David]

Why would the FCC need to rule on the remain silent STA filed in March when the one filed in April is basically the same document? The only difference I can see between the two filings is that the one filed in March describes the repairs made to the transmitter, and the temporary resumption of operations for a few hours. The STA filed in April was only filed by the bankruptcy receiver because the FCC hadn't ruled on the one he submitted in March. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that the end result is the same regardless of which STA was granted: KMRI's license is still valid, and the receiver has additional time to get the tower rebuilt and put the station back on the air. Moreover, my experience in researching the FCC database has been that when multiple STA's are filed for the same issue, the FCC usually grants one request and dismisses the others.

[CAwasinNJ]

(Usual disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.)

Technically there are three STA's that are still labelled as pending, but the January one I think is moot at this point so I'm not even going to worry about that one.

The March and April filings are actually different forms ("Legal STA" vs "Notification of Suspension of Operations / Request for Silent STA") What differences there are in the requirements to have each granted, if any, I don't know. If the April filing was simply because the first application hadn't been disposed of yet, that would be a bad idea in my opinion. I'm thinking now that's probably not what happened. In any case, there is a reason that the March application hasn't been disposed yet. It must be under review. The fact that an application filed a month later was already processed supports that. Granting the April application makes sense to me. If the March STA filing and its accompanying low power and very short return to the air are denied then I think the license expires as a matter of law and the April filing becomes moot. If March's application is approved, the end result is the same anyway. I'm sure the FCC has many different people processing all the applications in the order that they're received. If it were me I wouldn't want any more applications hanging out there than I have to. Dismissing a duplicate as a duplicate does make sense (and what I would do too), but I'm not sure whoever processed it realized that it was in fact a duplicate. As I mentioned, they are on different forms. There's also the question of the additional information in the March filing, which the processor of the April filing didn't have.

I think there was more but trying to piece this all together is confusing enough as it is and this post is long enough already. This is really just saying that in my opinion the March filing is the bellwether one and will ultimately decide what happens. I might be wrong, but that's what I'm going with.