Prometheus Wants Emergency Stay of Order Relaxing FM Translator Rules
The FCC should issue an immediate partial stay of its order loosening placement requirements for FM translators, said Prometheus Radio Project in an emergency petition posted Tuesday in docket 13-249. The order, unanimously approved at commissioners' Feb. 23 meeting (see…
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1702230060), takes effect April 10. “The premature grant of new translator applications will cause immediate and irreparable harm” to low-power FM licensees, Prometheus said. “Incumbent LPFM stations will thereafter be severely limited in seeking to relocate within their communities of service because these new FM translators will box in or short-space them," Prometheus said, and LPFM licensees that need to relocate “will be forced to shut down or to relocate to a distance that could preclude them from reaching their established community audience.” The group will seek reconsideration of the translator order, which it said is arbitrary and capricious because the order’s elimination of the 40-mile restriction on how far a translator can be located from a transmitter “was not a logical outgrowth” of the Further NPRM that preceded the order. The order doesn’t address possible impacts to LPFM, the advocate for such stations said. “It is apparent that the Office of Management and Budget shares this view, because it determined that the final version of the Order deviated so substantially from the proposal that its preapproval under the Paperwork Reduction Act was deemed insufficient,” the group said (see 1703080023).