FCC Might Not Put Off Radio Move-In Vote Though Stations Seek Delay
The FCC might not put off a vote on making it harder for radio stations to move from rural to urban areas, even after a group of more than 500 broadcasters last week formally sought a delay, agency officials said. They said that, as of Monday afternoon, the move-in part of a tribal radio order remained set for a vote at Thursday’s FCC meeting. It’s the only controversial part of a Media Bureau order that otherwise seeks to make it easier for tribes to get AM and FM licenses (CD Feb 22 p6). Broadcasters have no objections to the rest of the order, said a filing posted Friday to docket 09-52.
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No commissioner has proposed changing the part of the order that would in most cases bar a station from changing its community of license if more than half of the new service contour included an urban area, FCC officials said. The commission should defer action on that part of the order, said the Educational Media Foundation, owner of hundreds of FM translators, and other broadcasters including Ace Radio, Bustos Media, National Christian Network and several dozen others. The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council also signed the filing.
The FCC should “reconsider its priorities” as broadcasters still “suffer from the worst economic downturn in recent memory” and there are “so many more important media items are pending before the Commission [that] have, in some cases, been delayed for many years,” the filing said. It cited several petitions for reconsideration of a 2006 agency decision that made community of license changes easier, a proceeding on localism and 72 “long pending minority initiatives” proposed by the minority council. All “should be given greater priority” than the move-in order, the broadcasters said. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.
"The need to restrict the migration of stations to more heavily populated areas is modest albeit still much needed by minority broadcasters,” the filing said. “The need to restrict future city of license change proposals has not been demonstrated.” Eleven move-in requests involving new service areas that were mostly urban were made in 2010, accounting for 13 percent of community-of-license-change applications, the filing said, citing the petitioners’ research. Such so-called Tuck showings made up 19 percent of the community-change applications January 2007 through August 2009, when a move could be made using a minor-modification application, it said, citing previous industry research. “Whatever the perceived need to act in this area, the statistics do not support that endeavor.”