Long-Term Solutions for AM Revitalization Must Be Addressed Alongside Forthcoming NPRM, AM Consultants Say

The sustainability of AM needs to be addressed, said Charles Anderson, a broadcast technical consultant at Anderson & Associates. There needs to be ways to make it more economically viable for technical changes “so that stations will actually be around when the long-term solution occurs, which is all-digital,” he said. “The ability to use shorter towers is going to be important to the economic viability of many of these AMs that either have to replace towers or find a new site.” The translator window is a way of helping the smaller market, Anderson said. “Smaller market AMs are struggling.” Many of those licenses are being surrendered or just aren’t renewed, he said. Anderson also suggested that changes to interference standards may make it easier for AM stations to survive.

The most important proposal in the draft rulemaking is the window for FM translators, “which, even after the LPFM [low-power FM] window, will provide opportunities in the smaller markets,” said Anderson. But “it’s doubtful that it will provide much relief in the top 100 markets once the LPFM filings have been completed,” he added. “AMs are going to be failing and falling by the wayside if we don’t get some relief there, especially in the form of FM translators and tower simplification."

Easing relocation requirements for AM stations can have a long-term implication, said Lawrence Behr, CEO of LBA Group, a consultant to the wireless industry. No longer restricting stations to locations “where they put an arbitrary amount of signal over an arbitrary downtown location in today’s world” is a short-term proposal that could help in the long term, said Behr. “If you gave AMs the opportunity to relocate anywhere they wanted to within some reasonable area, and let them choose the population group that they want to serve, which only may be a piece of a metro area, let them locate to a place where they can best serve that and let it be a market-driven thing.” It could be very useful, he said. It also could help stations assess the geography and figure out where to put the towers, he added.

Protection for translators acting as fill-ins for AM stations should be introduced into the NPRM, Anderson said. “One single listener complaining about a translator interfering with a distant station that they're picking up with a high-gain antenna … could cause a translator to be taken off the air,” he said. “We need to protect them and treat them as primary services in the same way that we do Class A, low-power TV stations."

The FCC proposal that will have the most significant effect on the health and vitality of AM broadcasters and AM service is the commission’s facilitating the availability of as many FM translators as possible to rebroadcast AM stations, said John Garziglia, a radio attorney at Womble Carlyle. “Every AM broadcaster I am aware of who has been fortunate enough to acquire an FM translator for its AM re-broadcast has experienced a dramatic and possibly business-saving AM revitalization,” he said. An immediate relaxation of the FCC’s regulatory rules on modifying translator transmitter site locations and channels of operations would help many broadcasters acquire FM translators, he said. “Unfortunately, the FCC appears to have chosen a much more lengthy rulemaking and filing window process,” he said. “Rather than helping AM broadcasters now, this process will assist AM broadcasters several years from now,” he said. Such a delay “shows a regulatory blindness that worships lengthy bureaucratic procedures over immediate substantive results."

Behr said he doesn’t see much of a benefit from schemes aimed at obtaining more translators. “They're just free FM stations,” he said. “That’s going to do absolutely nothing for the AM band itself.” It may make daytime stations more viable, but “many of these translators are being abused and used as a method to move a signal into a market which wouldn’t really otherwise be covered,” he said.

Competitive technical quality can’t be achieved “until out-dated protected contour requirements are changed which now result in insufficient signal,” said Donald Everist, president of Cohen Dippell, a broadcast engineer consulting firm. AM receivers should be designed with power suppliers “with adequate filtering to minimize commercial building generated interference,” he said.

AM radio stations will probably have to convert to digital over the long-term, Behr said. This could likely be accomplished by allowing stations to use Digital Radio Mondiale technologies to set up a parallel station on the AM band, he said. When FM was introduced, AM stations set up an FM signal and operated with parallel programming until there were enough receivers for FM to operate on its own, he said. “Once you've got a transmitting tower up for one AM frequency, it’s not a really big problem in many cases to put a DRM transmitted signal on another frequency on the same tower.” Synchronizing AM station signals also could be achieved right away, Behr said. When signals of stations that are transmitting different programming are synchronized as to their frequency, it significantly reduces the interference between the stations, he said. “That’s something that would be very easy to do with GPS frequency standards."

It’s going to take a while to reach the long-term solution, which is all-digital radio, Garziglia said. There isn’t a sufficient receiver base yet, he said. As the number of receivers, particularly in vehicles, increases, “then it will make economic sense for some AM stations to switch over to all digital,” he said. A station with an FM translator also will help in the transition to an all-digital format, he said. For listeners without HD radio in their cars, there’s an FM translator that would serve them if the station were to go all digital, he added.

Anderson backed the findings from the 2012 NAB study that found that an all-digital AM service is going to be a viable service. The signal quality is excellent, Anderson said. Also, “the distance at which that signal can be received in an uninterrupted fashion before you lose it will expand coverage areas for AM radio stations compared to where they are today,” he said.

NAB is working on possible short-term and long-term improvements to AM radio reception, an NAB spokesman said. “Those include use of FM translators, boosting power on AM stations, testing of all-digital AM stations, and other options … No final decisions have been made.”

Some AM professionals applauded the FCC’s efforts, but bemoaned its timing. The FCC is moving at a “20th century pace in our 21st century,” Garziglia said. “If the FCC truly has a desire to revitalize AM, it needs to move at a much faster pace than an NPRM that will take years for a resolution and results,” he said. “I'm hoping the pace will accelerate with the NPRM,” said Anderson.