WPVC-LP
WPVC-LP was a progressive talk radio and electronic dance music formatted low-power radio station licensed to Charlottesville, Virginia, serving Charlottesville and Albemarle County in Virginia. WPVC-LP was owned and operated by Promise Land Communications.
History
On September 20, 2015, WPVC-LP first signed on the air for the first time.In September 2019, Saga Communications, which operates the Charlottesville Radio Group under the Tidewater Communications licensee, filed a petition with the FCC requesting that WXRK-LP's license not be renewed. Saga claimed the station, along with other Charlottesville-based low-power FMs, were operating as "a de facto cluster". WXRK-LP station's founder Mike Friend called the petition to deny "'legal junk' and a deliberate 'misinterpretation' of FCC rules". F riend pointed to other attempts by Saga to shutter low-power FM stations within Saga markets.
Saga, in 2004, claimed that KFLO-LP in Jonesboro, Arkansas, was airing announcements that "sound suspiciously like commercials". Saga also petitioned the FCC to revoke the license of WLCQ-LP, a Christian station in the Springfield, Massachusetts, market, "for equipment violations" in 2015. In both cases, the FCC "admonished the station" but denied Saga's complaints.
Jeff Lenert, co-founder of WPVC-LP, said that "though share a building" all of "the stations all operate separately, having only limited and largely incidental contact with each other". Lenert turned in the license for WPVC-LP on June 16, 2020, "As a result of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and recent increased costs of station ownership and operation, it has become impossible to operate station WPVC-LP in the manner that I wish." Lenert largely blamed the "legal action by Saga Communications combined with a loss of sponsors during the pandemic" for the signing off of that station. The station's license was deleted and its pending renewal dismissed on July 7 of the same year.
The FCC effectively denied the petition from Saga regarding WPVC, in a ruling for the license of WREN-LP, housed in the same building, filed on September 30, 2024.