FCC Eases Low-Power FM Station Sales, Other Changes
Low-power FM stations will be able to make some important changes without potentially long waits for FCC approval, under an order approved by commissioners late Tuesday (CD Special Bulletin Nov 28 p1), said agency and industry officials. After this week’s order is published in the Federal Register, LPFM broadcasters won’t have to file nearly as much paperwork with the FCC as they must now when more than half the stations’ directors leave, they said. Stations will be able to file so-called short forms, instead of long forms, about some changes, including board turnover.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The order formalizes many parts of a March 2005 rulemaking notice, an FCC official said. That notice sought public comment on whether stations should be transferrable. Stations now can be sold “subject to significant limitations,” a commission news release said. Station owners must be locally based and each can have only one license. Under authority granted by the commissioners, the Media Bureau had been approving some changes at licensees, an FCC source said.
Stations seeking to change their boards were hamstrung under the old rules, said Media Access Project Associate Director Parul Desai, who pushed for the new rules. “That’s helpful in that in the nonprofit world boards often change,” she said. “It’s a big deal, but it was a noncontroversial issue. I don’t think anyone disagreed on that point.” It took LPFM licensees a good deal of time to fill out FCC long forms because they required technical information, she added. The NAB supported some of the provisions, saying late Wednesday it’s “pleased the commission clarified that LPFM stations must indeed be locally owned with locally-originated programming, and limits ownership to one station per licensee.”
Other parts of the LPFM order are controversial. Commissioners Robert McDowell and Deborah Tate dissented in part. They said the FCC should have sought public comment before capping at 10 the FM translator applications the agency will consider each participant in a 2003 auction. “It is lower even than the numbers suggested by the LPFM advocacy groups in the record,” McDowell said. “Service provided by FM translators in many unserved areas may suffer interference.”
Translator seekers, with about 7,000 applications pending in Auction 83, will get to tell the commission which to dismiss, the FCC source said. The bureau will review the remaining applications. It has approved 3,500 -- and dismissed about 2,500, most at the filers’ request. Translators let stations fill in coverage areas. The Prometheus Radio Project, representing LPFM stations, supported a cap of 50 applications per entity in the draft order circulated by Chairman Kevin Martin (CD Nov 27 p3). “The FCC moved to prioritize local needs in their decisions on a number of administrative issues that are vital to LPFM radio station operators” by “helping groups make important changes to their boards of directors,” said Prometheus.
The commission stirred further controversy by recommending for a second time that Congress remove third adjacent channel protections for full-power broadcasters. LPFM stations would find it easier to operate in densely populated areas where spectrum is already packed with full-power radio, which worries the NAB. “It’s our strong belief that would be a recipe for massive interference for radio listeners,” said a spokesman. LPFM supporters want to expand service into big cities, where there are few available channels, he said. Lifting third adjacent channel protection could cause reception on car radios to fade, he added. “You can’t just give everyone with a Social Security card a radio station at birth and expect interference-free radio.”
Legislation to lift those protections has “momentum,” but it’s uncertain when it may pass, Desai said. Tate said the FCC’s recommendation to Congress seemed premature. “It would seem appropriate to wait in their instruction before moving forward,” she said. The Local Community Radio Act of 2007 (S-1675) passed Oct. 30 out of the Senate Commerce Committee. A similar bill (HR-2802) was introduced in June by Rep. Michael Doyle, D-Pa. It has 59 co-sponsors but hasn’t been moved out of the House Commerce Committee. “We are still working on co-sponsors on the House side,” said Desai. “I think there is interest, but there is also a lot of stuff going on.”