Re: [IRCA] Does KLIB 1110 CA really broadcast Russian Commie Youth programs?

[Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/4/2012 8:26 PM, Steve Francis wrote:
> The "requirement" that an expanded band station licensee, in order to
> "reduce the congestion on the AM band", must surrender the license of
> one of its two stations at the end of five years, was a joke. Most
> stations ignored it with impunity. The ones who complied and turned in a
> valuable license must feel like suckers.

In the end, I don't think there were more than a tiny handful of 
stations that surrendered their original license and were unable to get 
it back.

What happened, at least behind the scenes, was that both broadcasters 
and the FCC itself quietly realized that the expanded AM band wasn't 
going to accomplish anything useful as far as reducing congestion on the 
existing band.

The FCC essentially stopped doing ANYTHING with the X-band early in the 
21st century. The filing window for new AMs and major modifications to 
existing AMs that opened in 2004 explicitly excluded the X-band. By 
then, broadcasters had effectively stopped the clock by filing a 
rulemaking petition to revoke the five-year shutdown rule. The petition 
argued (quite correctly) that any improvement to the overall AM band 
from the five-year shutdowns was more than made up for by all the new AM 
noise that was created by the new filing window (and by AM IBOC!)

The FCC has never acted on that petition, and that's not by accident. By 
failing to act on the petition, the FCC doesn't have to do anything at 
all about the proceeding. A few of the stations that had gone silent 
(like KLIB) were quietly allowed to return to the air under Special 
Temporary Authority. The others that had remained on the air were 
allowed to stay on.

I can think of only a few stations that went silent and stayed silent. A 
few couldn't come back because they couldn't coexist with their X-band 
counterparts (1590/1610 Atmore, Alabama), and a few just couldn't 
justify keeping a big directional array in place (570 Biloxi, Mississippi).

One could argue that the bigger losers were the stations that never 
built their X-band assignments because they thought the X-band facility 
would be worse than their existing signal. WTRY 980 in Troy never built 
on 1640, WGIN 930 in Rochester NH never built on 1700 - but would they 
have done so if they'd known they could have kept 980 and 930, too?

So, yes, the X-band has not worked out the way the FCC intended...but 
one can argue that the Commission has at least figured out that the best 
way to avoid making even more of a mess was to just stop doing anything 
with it at all.
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