News from the Offices of
Munn-Reese, Inc.
Broadcast Engineering Consultants
100 Airport Drive – PO Box 220
Coldwater, MI 49036-0220
Wayne S. Reese, President
Telephone: 517-278-7339 – Internet: www.munn-reese.com – Fax: 517-278-6973
January - February 2000
Munn-Reese Matters
The FCC has certainly been doing its part to keep the beginning of the new year, century, and millennium from being boring! A short filing window for new AM stations and major changes in existing AM stations was scheduled for January 24-28. The window ended up being extended for two additional days to compensate for the time the Commission was closed during a snowstorm that hit the Washington DC area. We received a large number of inquiries regarding this window and were able to prepare applications for a number of clients. However, as expected, it turns out that a 30 day preparation period is not any too long to secure a site and perform the necessary studies to be certain a given AM proposal will work.
In addition to the AM filing window, the Commission also made major advancements in two other ongoing technical proceedings—the establishment of a Low Power FM (LPFM) service and the establishment of a Class A television service.
As if all this were not enough, the Commission also opened—and now is trying to shut—a "Pandora’s Box" involving religious programming on television channels reserved for non-commercial use. This story, along with the LPFM and Class A TV services mentioned above, will provide most of the material for this edition of the newsletter.
All of the releases regarding these stories have kept our wacky editor, Thumbs Feebleman, busy. In fact, he is almost cross-eyed—we’re still trying to decide if that improves or impairs his appearance! When we tell you that he spends all his spare time reading these materials, you will begin to get some idea of the exciting social life he leads. Even his own daughter has been known to hassle him with such comments as, "Dad, you are SUCH an engineer!"
Readers in the Michigan area may want to attend the Michigan Association of Broadcasters convention in Lansing, MI on February 29 and March 1. This annual event includes some engineering sessions and equipment displays. Our own Field Engineer, Ed Trombley, who also serves as an officer in the Lansing SBE chapter, is planning to attend part of the convention. Look for a friendly fellow with a dark handlebar mustache—you may even find him trying to enhance his microphone and tube collections by "horse trading" antique radio equipment with other broadcasters. If you want to be certain you meet up with him, give us a call so you can schedule a time and place to meet.
Commission Matters — LPFM
The FCC has made its long awaited ruling on the establishment of a Low Power FM (LPFM) service. Many broadcasters were hoping the Commission would abandon its plans for such a service. Although the FCC did not acquiesce to the broadcasters’ desires, it did implement several changes in the LPFM proposal that are designed to prevent of some of the broadcast community’s worst fears while promoting the FCC’s goals for this service. As the newsletter is being written, we are still in the process of working through all of the details contained in the Report and Order. We will try to highlight some of the main points for you here. You can also find a link the FCC’s LPFM page on our Internet web site—www.munn-reese.com.
The LPFM Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) had originally suggested the establishment of three different power levels for LPFM with maximum powers of 1,000 watts, 100 watts, and 10 watts. To protect existing broadcasters from further interference, the Report and Order (R&O) dropped the 1,000 watt stations and only authorized LP100 and LP10 stations. Applications for LPFM stations will be accepted in filing windows, and the initial window will be for LP100 facilities only. LP10 facilities will not be available until a later window. Initially, applicants can file electronically or use traditional paper application forms—although electronic filing is being strongly encouraged by the Commission. Applications for an LPFM Construction Permit will be filed on a yet to be released Form 318.
The LPFM NPRM asked for comments on foregoing the protection of 2nd and 3rd adjacent channel stations for LPFM facilities. This caused great concern for many broadcasters who feared intolerable interference from 1.0 kW stations operating on 2nd and 3rd adjacent channels. Dropping these protections would also have made it possible to allocate a larger number of LPFM facilities. In the end, the R&O dropped 3rd adjacent channel protection but retained the protection for 2nd adjacent channels.
The allocation of LPFM stations will include the entire FM band—both the NCE-FM reserved portion and the commercial portion. However, all LPFM stations will be non-commercial, and all applicants must be non-commercial or government entities. No individuals can apply. Allocations will be based on spacing between transmitter sites rather than contour protection. In establishing the final spacing table in the R&O, the Commission added 20 km to the required spacing toward co-channel and 1st adjacent channel stations that was proposed in the NPRM. This was done to provide additional protection to established stations and to give increased flexibility for any needed site changes by existing broadcasters. With the DTV build-out, it has become necessary for some stations who rented space on TV towers to find alternate locations to allow the TV stations to add the required DTV antennas to their own towers. This also provides some additional overhead for the expected future establishment of digital radio.
One of the announced goals of the LPFM service was to increase diversity and bring new voices to broadcasting. To implement these goals, the Commission established numerous eligibility restrictions for the new licenses. In fact, it may be easier to determine who is not eligible! Existing broadcasters and media entities will not be allowed to have any ownership interest in LPFM stations and will not be allowed to establish any program or operating agreements with them. Broadcasters will be happy to know that "pirate" broadcasters are also ineligible—unless they can certify that they ceased broadcasting prior to February 26, 1999 without specific direction from the FCC or they ceased their unlicensed operations within 24 hours of being advised by the FCC to do so. During the first two years of the new LPFM service, licensees will be required to be headquartered; have a campus; or have 75% of their board members residing within 10 miles of their LPFM station. After two years, applications will be accepted from non-local entities.
During the first two years, LPFM station ownership will also be restricted. Initially, licensees will only be able to own one LPFM station on a nationwide basis. After the LPFM service has its second birthday, the ownership cap will increase to five stations, and after the third birthday, the cap will take a final increase to ten stations. However, don’t plan to buy your initial or any subsequent LPFM facilities. LPFM stations will not be for sale—they are non-transferable. And don’t plan on more than one LPFM station in the same location. Co-owned LPFM stations will have to be separated by at least 12 km. If an organization ceases operation of an LPFM station, the license goes back to the FCC. LPFM stations will be assigned four letter call signs with an "LP" suffix.
Applications will be taken in a five day filing window. Because the service will be non-commercial, mutually exclusive applications will not be subject to auctions. Instead, the R&O establishes a "point" system to resolve multiple applications. Applicants will be awarded one point for each of the following: a) certifying an established community presence of at least two years prior to the application; b) pledging to operate at least 12 hours each day; and c) pledging to air at least eight hours of locally originated programming daily. Time sharing proposals will be used as a "tie breaker" between applicants with equal points. If that doesn’t work, the Commission will impose its own "time sharing" plan—each mutually exclusive applicant will be awarded a successive license term of at least one year (with the total not to exceed eight). At the end of the eight years, these licenses will not be renewable. However, licensees who do not end up with limited term licenses (as imposed by the FCC) will be able to renew their authorizations. All licensees will be required to operate a minimum of 36 hours per week.
The reactions of the FCC Commissioners were pretty much as expected. Chairman William Kennard, Commissioner Susan Ness, and Commissioner Gloria Tristani all issued statements supporting the R&O establishing the new service. Commissioner Michael Powell issued a statement supporting the decision but dissenting in part. He expressed concern about whether the Commission had adequately considered the impact establishment of the new LPFM service would have on existing broadcasters. Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth issued a statement opposing the decision. He argued that the establishment of 100 watt and smaller stations is not an efficient use of spectrum. He also pointed out that most of the new licenses will have to be established in rural areas in order to meet the spacing requirements set forth in the new rules. Each of the Commissioners’ statements is available on the FCC’s LPFM page on the Internet. If you have trouble finding it, there is a direct link on our web site: www.munn-reese.com.
Commission Matters — Class A TV
Last September, the FCC adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to establish a primary protection status for some LPTV stations, to be known as Class A television service. On November 29, Congress forced the Commission’s hand by enacting the Community Broadcasters Protection Act of 1999. The Act only gave the Commission 120 days to establish Class A television service. Consequently, the FCC suspended the NPRM it had already begun, and on January 13, 2000, the Commission released a combination Order and Notice of Proposed Rule Making.
Reading the January release provides an appreciation for the challenges faced by the FCC. As much as we all like to complain about the evils of bureaucracy, this document helps you realize there are good reasons for establishing bureaus to handle the nitty gritty details of writing orderly regulations. In its haste to force the Commission to establish a protected Class A service, Congress has turned television allocations into total confusion and disorder.
In the "good old days" of NTSC only television, primary stations were allotted by establishing spacing requirements between groups of channels that had potential to cause interference to one another. When LPTV services were added as secondary services, they were allotted using contour protection. However, as secondary services they were allowed to receive overlap from primary stations but could not create any overlap to them. Life was still relatively simple. By the time DTV allocations were developed, it was possible to use complex computer modeling to predict even small areas of interference with the Longley-Rice propagation model. So the initial DTV stations are protected based on potential interference to viewers from a given proposal. Life began to get much more complex for both your friendly neighborhood allocations engineer and the Commission. Now Congress has mandated that the new Class A stations will be protected on the basis of their service contours. So now there will be three different "primary" services—each protected by a totally different methodology. And don’t forget that all of this increase in protected service is accompanied by a decrease in the amount of spectrum allocated for all television services.
With all of these changes taking place, including the supposed transition from analog to digital service for the original "primary" stations, efforts were made to allow stations to carve out some protection for the future. DTV stations were given an opportunity to file letters with the Commission stating their intentions of upgrading their facilities. Likewise, those LPTV stations meeting the criteria set forth in the Act were given the opportunity to file paperwork to reserve a future Class A allocation. However, the Order and NPRM is filled with unanswered questions for which the Commission is seeking answers. The number of these questions and the scope of the complexities are beyond what we can address in this newsletter, but many deal with how conflicting protections should be prioritized. For example, to what extent should protection and/or modifications of a Class A station be allowed to preclude the modification of a full power analog or digital facility, and vice versa? If a DTV facility operating outside the "core" channels maximizes its facilities, will it be allowed to replicate the same service area once it moves into the core at the conclusion of the transition period? And what about LPTV facilities that are presently forced to operate outside the "core" spectrum, but otherwise qualify for Class A status? Will they be allocated a Class A channel inside the core after the transition? And what sort of protection should Class A stations receive when they switch over to digital service?
Suffice it to say that achieving fair protection for these various television services is not an easy task. February 10 is the due date for comments in the proceeding, and reply comments are due February 22. The entire Order and NPRM is available on the FCC web site. From the home page, follow the links to the Mass Media Bureau, Orders, 2000, and look for FCC00016.doc.
Many TV and LPTV licensees would like to know which channels may be available after the transition to digital service is complete. With full power stations having the option to keep either their analog or digital channel, prediction of future available channels is very similar to predicting which parking spaces in your town will be vacant on some summer afternoon in 2006!
Look for all future television applications to become extremely complex and much more expensive. There is no longer such a thing as a simple allocation study for television. We worry a little bit about Thumbs Feebleman—sometimes he thinks he’s really beginning to understand all the changes in television allocations, and then there are other times when just sits in front of his computer, babbling incoherently!!
Commission Matters — Religious NCE-TV
In December, the Commission issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order (MO&O) approving a series of transfers for several Pittsburgh area television stations. In the middle of this proceeding was a religious broadcaster, Cornerstone TeleVision, Inc. The proposal involved the sale of Cornerstone’s present commercial television channel to Paxson Pittsburgh Licensee, Inc. Cornerstone was then going to purchase Channel 16 from WQED Pittsburgh, which is a channel that has been reserved for non-commercial educational use. WQED, which has operated two NCE-TV stations in the market, would have been left with a single outlet after completion of the transfer. A citizens’ group in the Pittsburgh area objected to the transfers on numerous grounds, including the idea of a religious broadcaster assuming operation of a television channel reserved for non-commercial educational broadcasting.
In approving the transfer, the Commission attempted to clarify the requirements for non-commercial television broadcasting. The rules restricting operation on reserved television channels are not the same as those set forth for the reserved NCE-FM channels. However, no clear-cut guidelines as to what is, and what is not, educational programming are provided for either set of reserved channels—much of this determination has been left to the judgment of the licensee. In noting the very nebulous nature of the historical and legal record, the Commission decided to provide two paragraphs of "additional guidance" in the MO&O.
The first of these two paragraphs basically required stations operating on reserved TV channels to have more than half of their regular weekly programming devoted to material that would "…serve an educational, instructional or cultural purpose in the station’s community of license." Secondly, in order to qualify for this purpose, "…a program must have as its primary purpose service to the educational, instructional or cultural needs of the community."
However, the second paragraph touched off a firestorm in the religious broadcasting community. Here is the infamous paragraph #44 (footnotes have been omitted)— "In assessing whether a program has as its primary purpose service to the educational, instructional or cultural needs of the community, ‘we will not disqualify any program simply because the subject matter of the teaching or instruction is religious in nature.’ We do not believe that the discussion of religious matters during a program that has as its primary purpose service to the educational, instructional or cultural needs of the broader community disqualifies the program from being a ‘general educational’ program under Section 73.621. Conversely, however, not all programming, including programming about religious matters, qualifies as ‘general educational’ programming. For example, programming primarily devoted to religious exhortation, proselytizing, or statements of personally-held religious views and beliefs generally would not qualify as ‘general educational’ programming. We reiterate that the reserved television channels are intended ‘to serve the educational and cultural broadcast needs of the entire community to which they are assigned,’ and to be ‘responsive to the overall public as opposed to the sway of particular political, economic, social or religious interests.’"
Apparently, the current group of Commissioners does not remember the voluminous response from the public when a petition was filed in the 1970’s requesting that religious stations not be allowed to use the reserved FM channels. Rumors circulated for years that the famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair was trying to ban religious radio—even though she did not file the original petition or any similar petition. Many of us in the broadcasting business have tried to explain this—on numerous occasions—to well-intentioned parishioners at our respective houses of worship. The Commissioners received a "refresher" course, and on January 28, 2000, the Commission vacated (rescinded) paragraphs 43 and 44 of the MO&O. In a footnote to his supporting statement, Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth said, "Reaction against this decision was swift, strong, and voluminous. In the past two weeks alone, I have received more than 1,000 messages from opposed citizens. Many members of Congress have also voiced their strong objections in letters to the Commission; in fact, legislation to counteract the decision was introduced almost immediately after its release." Religious broadcasters will enjoy reading Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth’s statement concurring with the decision to vacate. However, they should also read Commissioner Tristani’s dissenting statement—and the whole statement should be read before deciding to "cast the first stone!" Commissioner Powell also issued a brief statement supporting the decision to vacate the additional guidelines. In part, his statement said, "As I predicted in my dissenting statement opposing this ‘additional guidance’ in the original Order, it has opened a Pandora’s Box of problems. In today’s decision we put the lid back on the box."
In the meantime, Cornerstone determined it could not carry out its mission under the "additional guidelines" provided by the Commission, and on January 18, Cornerstone announced it was withdrawing from the multiple station sales agreement. There is no word yet on whether Cornerstone will reconsider its decision now that the Commission has withdrawn its "guidance."
Miscellaneous Matters
Have you been following the debate over DTV standards? The Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., which owns a large number of television outlets, ran a series of tests comparing the 8-VSB transmission standard adopted by the FCC with the COFDM standard used by some other countries. Sinclair claimed that the COFDM modulation system worked significantly better in urban areas when simple "rabbit ears" and "loop" antennas were used. Under similar conditions, the 8-VSB modulation suffered severe multi-path problems. Sinclair filed a Petition of Expedited Rulemaking asking the Commission to allow broadcasters to use the COFDM system of DTV transmission. On February 4, the Commission sent Sinclair a letter denying the petition. The letter said that Sinclair had demonstrated a shortcoming in the early DTV receiver designs, but the Commission continues to believe the 8-VSB system is fully capable of replicating NTSC service areas. The FCC did recognize the importance of the issues raised in the Sinclair petition and suggested comments on the merits of the DTV standards would be appropriate during the upcoming biennial review of the DTV transition.
The Commission has released new EEO standards for the broadcast and cable industries. The revised rules come in response to the DC Court of Appeals decision in 1998 that declared parts of the previous rules to be unconstitutional. For more information about the requirements contained in the new EEO rules, contact your Communications Attorney.
Upcoming Matters
We trust your transition to the new millennium was "bug free," and that you’ve been able to master writing "2000" in all those spots where "1999" used to go. Ah, those old habits die hard, don’t they? These are also times of transition in the technical regulations for broadcasting. We hope you will continue to allow us to provide technical studies and services for your facilities.
Because of the important implications of the recent FCC proceedings, this issue of the newsletter has run a little longer than usual. So we will not be including our usual table of e-mail addresses, however, they are all posted on our web site: www.munn-reese.com.