Rules for New Tower Construction Benefit Broadcasters, Wireless Industry, Say AM Station Attorneys

The impact on radio stations “is something that radio station owners will like,” said Ronald Rackley, an attorney at du Treil Lundin: “It’s a good thing for the broadcasters.” The firm, which works on licensing for AM stations, supported the use of computer modeling in the proceeding, he said. “One reason AM broadcasters supported making the change for the users of other towers is to avoid the disruption of having to operate with their nighttime directional antennas in the daytime, which harms their coverage.” Under the previous regulations, when a change was made to a wireless tower, AM stations had to run field strength measurements on the AM station’s directional antenna before and after the change, he said. The AM station had to operate in the daytime with the antenna normally used at night, he said: “That in general, reduces coverage because the antennas used at night, more often than not, have coverage that’s inferior to the daytime signal.”

The order clarifies rules pertaining to newcomers who want to build a tower, said David Oxenford, a broadcast attorney at Wilkinson Barker. The rules should help make clear the obligation of newcomers “to assume the financial responsibility to remedy disruptions to AM stations,” he said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/17ETNeH). The rules “should eliminate many disputes over the responsibility for the disruption of the patterns of AM radio stations,” he said.

The rules designate moment method modeling “as the principal means of determining whether a nearby tower affects an AM pattern,” the order said (http://bit.ly/13zcmUP). The rules eliminate short towers from consideration and exclude many routine cases where antennas are added to existing towers, it said. The commission adopted the threshold heights of 36 electrical degrees for a directional antenna and 60 electrical degrees for a non-directional antenna, the order said.

The new rules will be helpful when it comes to identifying and correcting sources of interference to AM stations, said Harry Cole, a broadcast attorney at Fletcher Heald. “Having a uniform set of criteria applicable to all services reduces the potential for confusion and misunderstanding considerably.”

Going forward, the changed rules will likely have benefits for the wireless industry, Rackley said. The proposals supported by du Treil were initially focused on allowing stations to license their directional antennas using computer modeling, he said. Broadcast engineers and AM stations later began to recommend applying the rules to towers “that aren’t part of an AM antenna system to show that they're not harming the signal,” Rackley said. “Once the smoke clears, I think the wireless industry is going to find things streamlined for them also.” There were questions and issues that needed to be resolved when the rules were established for AM directional antennas, he said: “I think we're about to start doing that with the wireless towers now, like we had to do with the radio stations’ systems."

The rule changes and Commissioner Ajit Pai’s interest in improving the AM band are expected to bring about further changes, Rackley said. There will probably be some proposed rules “that would seem pretty sweeping to some people to take a look at some of the ways that AM radio stations are regulated and how they might be able to optimize coverage and make changes more easily through streamlined rules,” he said. The new order is wise, said Jeffrey Smulyan, Emmis Communications president. “We have to do some things to work on the band.” It’s a “lofty, worthwhile goal,” he said. Emmis is rolling out a service that puts FM chips in smartphones (CD Aug 16 p15). “I would love to do that with AM, but technically it’s just very tough to do.” He said he would like other rules improving AM band opportunities to follow the direct measurement order.