Are AM broadcasters really asking for free spectrum?
That’s the impression FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler appears to have.
Following his remarks to reporters after Thursday’s open meeting, RBR+TVBR turned to legal experts for their views.
AM experts have told RBR+TVBR that what owners have asked for is the right to apply — at auction — for an FM translator.
Wheeler’s comment that “It’s not the general policy of this agency to give away free spectrum” seems to back-up his belief that it would give AM stations a privilege not available to others, noted Fletcher Heald’s Frank Montero.
Typically, in a filing window where there are multiple mutually-exclusive applicants for commercial (non-reserved) channels, the applicants are first given an opportunity to work out technical resolutions. If no resolution is possible, then the applicants go to auction.
For radio markets where there are multiple AM stations and only a few open FM translator frequencies, it is likely that such an auction filing window would attract mutually-exclusive applications for the same frequencies that, absent settlements, would go to FCC auction and be sold by the FCC to the highest bidder, according to Womble Carlyle’s John Garziglia.
“There is nothing free about obtaining a radio facility through an FCC auction,” he tells RBR+TVBR.
There will be extremely rural locations in which there are only a few AM stations. If those AMs file in an FM translator auction filing window, they might find their applications not mutually-exclusive with another application and therefore would receive a grant of the FM translator without going to auction, he notes.
“But, in any moderate size radio market, the number of AM radio stations seeking FM translators will almost certainly exceed the number of open FM translator frequencies. Thus, this perception, both within the AM broadcasting community and apparently with the chairman, that an AM-only FM translator auction window will result in free FM translators for most AM stations is wholly erroneous,” says Garziglia.
