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Miami/Fort Lauderdale FM coverage pattern

davideduardo said:
There was never an FCC requirement or specification regarding live vs. automated. That was a station choice, usually based on cost and the availability of talent.

Most of us had 5 to 6 hours of Public Affairs/Educational/Other commitments and ran either through as late as noon on Sunday or both Sunday morning and Sunday night.

Generally, in that era an AM needed 8% non-entertainment programming and an FM needed 6% to get an easier renewal. Those percentages were made up of news, public affairs, educational and some religious programs.

Typically, a music FM that did not want news in most dayparts would do heavy news overnights, and then do newscasts just in AM drive the rest of the day. Then you'd need about 5 to 6 hours of those Sunday shows to complete the quota.
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As I recall, the FCC was unhappy if you ran more than 18 mins an hour of commercial content with exceptions made for afternoon and morning drives and for around the holidays.
 
Does Miami's FM antenna farm have a directional "lobe?" more to the north? I'm wondering because I commute up and down Miami to Jacksonville a lot on I-95 and I've noticed often time I could pickup WFLC 97.3 way up to Cocoa area. 97.3 is the only one that can go that far out, all others start fading near Port St Lucie due to co channel interference from Orlando
 
bigdonho said:
As I recall, the FCC was unhappy if you ran more than 18 mins an hour of commercial content with exceptions made for afternoon and morning drives and for around the holidays.
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Over 18 minutes of commercials in any hour in any of the "composite week" days would usually be addressed in the renewal application at filing.

Among the reasons the FCC generally accepted were things like one of the days being in an election campaign period where stations often had to exceed limits to meet equal opportunity requirements, seasonal peaks in very retail oriented markets ("we could not turn local businesses down") and even lots of make goods after several days of storm or emergency coverage.

There was no codified exception for dayparts or seasons.
 

davideduardo said:​

There was no codified exception for dayparts or seasons.

Actually, I don't think any of the quotas were codified. It just raised a flag with the FCC and caused them to scrutinize the renewal application more closely.
 


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