## Facts

- Saginaw Broadcasting Company applied for an FCC construction permit to build a radio station in Saginaw, Michigan on 1200 kHz, with limited power and time-sharing operation with station WMPC in Lapeer, Michigan.
- Competing applicants Harold F. Gross and Edmund C. Shields sought a permit for a Saginaw station on 950 kHz with higher power for daytime-only operation.
- The FCC set both applications for a joint hearing; evidence focused on engineering data, predicted interference (including effects on WMPC), and comparative service to the Saginaw area.
- A trial examiner recommended granting Saginaw’s application and denying Gross and Shields’ application.
- The FCC’s Broadcast Division rejected the examiner’s recommendation, granted Gross and Shields’ application, and denied Saginaw’s application.
- The FCC’s order initially stated that findings of fact would be issued later; when issued, the findings were challenged as incomplete and partially inaccurate.
- Saginaw sought appellate review in the D.C. Circuit under Communications Act § 402(b)(1).

## Issues

1. Whether an FCC order selecting one broadcast applicant over another may stand when the Commission’s findings of fact are missing from the order and later-issued findings are incomplete and partially inaccurate.
2. Whether, under Communications Act § 402(b)(1), a court can meaningfully review the Commission’s “public interest, convenience, or necessity” determination without full and accurate findings explaining the choice and the rejection of the examiner’s recommendation.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit reversed the FCC’s order and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the Commission’s findings were not sufficiently complete or accurate to support the grant to Gross and Shields and the denial to Saginaw.
- The court declined to uphold the decision based on conclusory statements or to reconstruct a rationale from the record.
- The remedy was remand, not a judicial directive to grant Saginaw’s application, because the FCC remained the primary fact-finder and decision-maker.

## Legal Principles

- An administrative order must be supported by findings of fact that are full, explicit, accurate, and grounded in the record so a reviewing court can evaluate legality.
- Agency discretion in technical and policy matters does not excuse failure to articulate the material facts and reasoning connecting those facts to the statutory standard.
- When an agency departs from a hearing examiner’s recommendation, it must explain the basis for doing so with findings that disclose why the preferred outcome serves the public interest.

## Conclusion

The court required the FCC to provide complete and accurate findings that explain how its comparative licensing decision serves the public interest; without such findings, judicial review under the Communications Act cannot be effectively performed, and the order must be reversed and remanded.


Saginaw Broad. Co. v. FCC, 96 F.2d 554 (D.C. Cir. 1938)