Media Bureau Rejects Board of Ed's Plea to Reinstate AM Station

The FCC Media Bureau rejected an emergency petition from the Albuquerque Board of Education seeking the reinstatement of a canceled AM station and FM translator in Los Alamos, New Mexico, as procedurally defective, said a letter in Friday’s Daily Digest. The licenses for the stations were voluntarily surrendered to the FCC by owner Gillian Sutton and canceled in May, but that left the region with no local AM service. The ABE asked the agency to reinstate the licenses and assign them to the ABE on a temporary basis. The petition was filed two months later than the deadline for reconsideration of the license cancellation and, because ABE wasn’t a party to that proceeding, it doesn’t have standing to make such a request, the agency said. The FCC previously ruled third parties with no attributable interest in a surrendered station have no standing to seek reinstatement of the license, the letter said.