Newly Signed Legislation Doesn’t Favor LPFM Over Translators, Say NAB, EMF
The Local Community Radio Act doesn’t favor low-power over translator stations in the FM band, said the NAB and the owner of several hundred translators. Their filings and one from a provider of engineering data to low-power FM (LPFM) stations were posted to docket 99-25 Tuesday and Wednesday. Those filings and ones last week (CD Jan 11 p8) from a group representing LPFM stations and a dozen broadcasters seeking FCC permission to operate more translators come after a commission official encouraged comments on how the act applies to a translator auction. President Barack Obama signed the act this month.
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Chairman Julius Genachowski has publicly said the FCC wants to give would-be LPFM broadcasters a chance to apply for stations, and the agency is trying to move toward that, an agency official said. The regulator is looking at alternatives to a 2007 order that limited to 10 apiece the number of requests it would consider from each applicant for FM translators in Auction No. 83, agency and industry officials said. Educational Media Foundation, the translator owner, said the cap would stymie the introduction of translators in rural areas that need them and won’t likely get LPFM service.
The “rule of 10” cap seems premised on a belief, which the legislation nullifies, that LPFM stations are preferred over translators, the foundation said: “Given that such a conclusion is precluded by statutory language that these services are ‘equal in status,’ any such presumption must fail.” Making translator seekers wait years for application windows and limiting the number of stations that can be sought may mean it’s “decades before a broadcaster like EMF, who is ready and willing to serve many smaller communities” that are unlikely to get LPFM outlets, would be able to reach them, Educational Media Foundation said. “A denial of service to these communities for the foreseeable future does not seem to serve the ‘needs of the community’ as required by Section 5(2)” of the act.
Section 5 doesn’t “create a preference for any particular” service that’s secondary to full-power radio stations, the NAB said. “All provisions of Section 5 must be read together” so that provisions on spectrum for translators, boosters and low-power stations in the FM band are properly applied, the association said. The regulator needs to “have simplified processes for pending applications,” it said. NAB representatives met with Media Bureau officials who are trying to implement the legislation.
"The FCC needs to do some housecleaning to clean the record of defective applications” in Auction No. 83, said the engineering data provider, REC Networks. “The incentive needs to be taken away from speculators” in that auction by dismissing requests with “defects” that are “extreme” on their face, and those from entities without any radio holdings before the application window, it said. The commission should “look at creative methods of extending the number of available LPFM channels in a given area,” which “has the potential of getting the availability of LPFM channels on a playing field closer to that of the translator applications,” REC said. It said translators should be protected from LPFM interference on a “more granular scale” that more closely represents a translator’s service area.