Radio Moves to Urban Areas Would Become Harder Under Draft FCC Order

Some lawyers representing radio stations said the order is ill-timed, coming after hundreds of stations have completed such moves and fewer are planning them now with station values having fallen. Because members of the NAB and National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters are divided on the issue -- some broadcasters already in urban areas don’t want to face more competition from move-ins -- there may not be very much FCC lobbying, industry officials said. “It sounds like they're trying to keep large-market broadcasters from being subjected to competition from new broadcasters,” though the commission doesn’t seem to intend that outcome, said radio lawyer John Garziglia of Womble Carlyle. “The opposition is going to come from those broadcasters that through the years have been successful in taking what was perhaps a mediocre radio broadcasting facility and making it better."

What’s said to be in the draft order is a bad idea, Executive Director David Honig of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council told us. “Rural residents aren’t crying out for more radio stations. But many rural radio stations simply must relocate closer to large communities or they won’t survive,” he said. “The FCC should adopt the Native American provisions, but table the portions of the draft order that would impede minority ownership until it has made some headway dealing with the dozens of pro-minority ownership proposals long pending before the agency.” Representatives of the NAB and NABOB had no comment.

Stations seeking community of license changes, which often are accomplished through filing minor-modification applications, would face hurdles to doing so under the draft order, commission officials said. They have to show that any move-in would mean the station served a city of license that’s independent from the larger urban area, that the community where the broadcaster would go needs additional local content and that the AM or FM outlet could serve that need, an agency official said. The draft order is said to note that current commission rules haven’t stopped the migration of stations from rural areas to bigger markets. The draft also sticks closely to a 2009 rulemaking notice, agency officials said. It’s at http://xrl.us/bii7mc. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.

The commission has approved 613 minor-modification requests for community of license changes since 2006, when an order allowed stations to make such changes using that method, agency figures show. During that time, 45 requests were dismissed. There were 92 pending on Friday afternoon, 74 of those for FM stations (http://xrl.us/bii7mt) and the rest for AM (http://xrl.us/bii7mx). Industry lawyers who oppose the change said their clients had no or few pending requests, versus years past when they were more plentiful. All except for two initial comments in the rulemaking, in docket 09-52, opposed the plan (CD Aug 17/09 p6).

"Word that that proposal is sort of coming back to life after it was put on hold caught some people by surprise, and the record was very clear in opposition to this,” said broadcast lawyer Frank Jazzo of Fletcher Heald. To Mark Lipp, a broadcast attorney at Wiley Rein, “it just seems like they would have to ignore the comments to proceed,” he said of the agency. “At a time when there seems to be so little need to restrict these kinds of moves, when there are so few [requests] being filed, there is so little spectrum available for these kinds of moves, it’s like why does the commission feel the need to shut down something that is almost non-existent?” In many past instances, the station doing the moving often would compensate a broadcaster in the urban market that would be affected, industry lawyers said.