I suppose it's possible. WSBB jumped through hoops to get other stations moved and their COL changed. It was a major undertaking and took quite a while to happen.
Maybe one of the engineers who post here, MediaMan and WAVO, will give us their take on this.
WSBB already has filed for the move-in to midtown but the FCC can not grant it until the cross ownership rule goes away. So, they may soon have a CP there. While the station will lose coverage toward rural areas of Northeast Georgia, it will gain coverage west and southwest of Atlanta. I suspect most of the 20% of their total WSB audience now listening to AM 750 are in those areas of the metro and now will be able to get a FM signal.
The WALR move closer to Atlanta, begun in the flush radio market days prior to the 2008 crash, has largely always been controlled more by spectrum and the airport than the cross ownership rule. The area to locate closer to Atlanta t was greatly impacted by the closeness of the Atlanta airport..which not only limits the height of towers on that side of ATL but nowadays also runs into more restricted rules on FM interference to the radio systems used to guide planes into the airport. The 101.1 translator recently got slammed for interference to the aeronautical systems used by the airport. Only in the past 5 to 10 years have FM radio stations had to deal with the aeronautical interference if they located on existing towers. Prior to then, it only came into play if a radio station planned to build a new tower.
Presently WALR is even more restricted since they erred with changed FCC policy for city of license change which allowed the 104.1 I.F. channel 93.3 station to get an upgrade and a co channel station near Cleveland TN to delete a directional antenna pattern hemming in WALR and requiring them to downgrade from 100KW to 60kW, their original power level at the Newnan tower site. They have now filed to keep 100KW but off a shorter tower northwest of the present site. They will lose a great deal of their rural coverage toward Columbus, Macon and Alabama but will still cover the areas they need to plus they have the big signal 93.5 translator northeast of Atlanta which added coverage even to the former 100KW signal. Being number one in Harris County, GA has no financial benefit to WALR or any other Atlanta market station.
WSRV had applied for a site closer to Atlanta but it still recognized the rules required by cross ownership. They can move 97.1 much closer to Atlanta before they run into the protected area of 97.5 at Peachtree City. I've heard if they downgraded to a C2 (50,000 watts) they could get much closer in to Atlanta and since cross ownership goes away, they no longer have to avoid their city grade contour covering 100% of the corporate limits of Atlanta where the AJC is published. That being said, one could conclude that if Cox wanted to move WSRV closer in to Atlanta, it would have already filed for the permit and had it on standby just like they did with WSBB. Finally I've been told there is no truth to rumors there is a structural problem with the present WSRV tower. Furthermore, the load will be less when WSBB moves to midtown.
