Media Bureau Reaches $100,000 Settlement With Radio Licensee Who Used False Names
The FCC Media Bureau reached a $100,000 settlement with broadcast licensee Brian Dodge, who used assumed names and applications filled out in the names of family members to control numerous FM translators, AM, FM and low-power FM stations, said a…
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consent decree released Thursday. “Due to a variety of factors, including the number of factual issues and the passage of time (with intervening deaths of certain persons who were named as principals of some applicants), a hearing would be lengthy and complex and would require a significant commitment of Commission resources,” the consent decree said. Dodge has been filing applications under false identities for stations mostly in the Northeast since 1982, said the Media Bureau. “Over most of that history, those applications and the radio station operations arising from various granted applications have been under a cloud of unanswered questions about whether the applications were factually accurate,” the consent decree said. “FCC enforcement action was inhibited by uncertainty as to which applicants might be secretly controlled by Dodge and Dodge's refusal to provide information to the FCC,” the Media Bureau said. Under the consent decree, Dodge will receive “conditional, short-term” license renewals for his FM translator stations, the grant of three pending assignment applications for those stations, and another license renewal. In exchange, he will have to pay the $100,000 settlement, have the licenses of two LPFM stations and an AM station canceled, and two petitions of reconsideration for FM applications dismissed, the decree said.