With longtime D.C. attorneys David Oxenford and Mark Lipp handling the submission to the FCC, three radio broadcasting companies have offered comments to the Commission asking that its “dual band” regulatory policy for expanded band AM radio stations get a fresh look and slight modernization.
Bryan Broadcasting License Corp., Mid-West Management Inc., Multicultural Radio Broadcasting and Way Broadcasting all operate and own AM radio stations between 1605 kHz and 1705 kHz.
In response to a May 2025 docket from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, the companies believe two proceedings could be terminated as they are dormant, and both are related to the expanded AM band.
One is MB Docket No. 13-349, linked to “AM Revitalization,” and MB Docket No. 07-294, “Promoting Diversification of Ownership in the Broadcasting Services.”
As the four licensees see it, “if by terminating these proceedings the Commission is determining that the status quo with respect to Licensees’ Expanded Band
stations should continue, then these proceedings can be terminated.”
That said, if there remains any open issue with respect to the licensees’ Expanded Band stations, these dockets should remain open until such issues can be resolved, the companies state.
When the Commission first adopted its rules for operation in the expanded band, it
provided certain existing AM stations with the opportunity to operate both an existing AM
station and a paired new station in the Expanded Band, calling these facilities “Dual Band Stations.”
In the Commission’s original Expanded Band policy, there was a tentative conclusion that, at the end of a five-year period after an Expanded Band station’s initial license date, its licensee would relinquish either its Expanded Band station or its original standard AM band station. This five-year transition period, however, was not a hard and fast deadline, the groups point out. In the Expanded Band Order, the Commission stated that the five-year term was only the “initial time frame,” acknowledged the need for flexibility in enforcing the time limit, and committed to “monitor progress in the use of the expanded band during this period and grant an appropriate extension if factors affecting the overall development of the band warrant such action.”
It was in March 2006 when expanded band AM licensees sought a FCC waiver request, seeking changes to the tentative relinquishment requirement. And, since then, the Commission has determined that the continued joint operation of the Dual Band
Stations is in the public interest “in order to preserve AM service for the public.”
The groups conclude, “Dual Band Stations have continued operating for almost twenty years since the Waiver Request was filed to extend the suggested relinquishment period, and there have been no formal pleadings filed on the issue in either docket in almost a decade, since the comment period in MB Docket No. 13-349 expired in 2016. As the Commission has repeatedly granted the license renewals of the Licensees’ Dual Band Stations during this period with no suggestion that either their standard band or Expanded Band station has a limited expectation of future operations, and as the Commission has concluded that their continued joint operations were in the public interest in the few instances where it has been called on to address these stations, the Licensees believe
that the Commission has acknowledged that their continued operations are permissible.
Therefore, the issues raised in MB Docket Nos. 07-294 and 13-349 concerning the Expanded Band appear to be moot.”
