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Another Hopper?

P

purpledevil

Guest
Hmm...Centro Christiano has another apparent hopper coming to a radio near you, as K287BQ Freeport has filed to turn its directional antenna 180° facing Pearland. Filed 10-22-2015, looks like it's another in search of the latest lillypad.

http://fccdata.org/?facid=148244
 
Interesting.
It's changing it's city of license to Alvin, too. It's original station is 99.1.
 
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The FCC needs to stop these insane useless translators. Translators should only be used for AM stations and not these ridiculous misuses of this technology.
 
I do have to agree with Stan. Translators were originally intended to be fill ins for terrain challenged areas that were within what would have been the normal coverage area if terrain wasn't an issue. Somewhere in the early 1980s that changed. I'd like to see translator rules go back to that and to make it a win-win, allow those existing translators to originate versus repeat programming and permit selling those that the respective licensees cannot operate financially as local stations. Keep in mind a local station has certain rules that increase operation costs such as a local presence aka office and studio.
 
What if this filing window gave preferential treatment to Muslims, Christians, or blacks? Folks, myself included, are upset because this AM only filing window is likely to be the LAST FM band filing window.

For years we had minority tax incentives. We had minority preferences in applications. Going further afield, we have the SBA that favors small business and won't deal with larger ones. The books are full of laws and regulations that attempt to "equalize" or level the playing field for folks who have not gotten the opportunities they perhaps should have in the past.

How many thousands of AM broadcasters are going to seek FM translators? Afterwards, what spectrum will be left for the next LPFM window

An analysis of what the usefulness of LPFMs might be would be appropriate. How many are other than church-operated stations that tend to fall by the wayside when they can't operate seven days a week. Or they are hobby stations where the few volunteers they may have had at the start drop off and what we hear is a computer playing the same playlist over and over from a hard disk. The very few useful LPFMs don't justify the hopes and expectations that were "sold" to the FCC and the public when the idea was in its infancy.

I'm also hearing on the grapevine that at least one AM station is now contemplating adding HD subchannels (yeah, HD on AM!) to be able to separately program more than one translator.

Is that the "grapevine" that produces your usual serving of sour grapes?

The AM HD spec does not contemplate an HD-2 channel. There is just barely enough bandwidth for the HD service of the analog channel and a bit of data.
 
I do have to agree with Stan. Translators were originally intended to be fill ins for terrain challenged areas that were within what would have been the normal coverage area if terrain wasn't an issue. Somewhere in the early 1980s that changed. I'd like to see translator rules go back to that and to make it a win-win, allow those existing translators to originate versus repeat programming and permit selling those that the respective licensees cannot operate financially as local stations. Keep in mind a local station has certain rules that increase operation costs such as a local presence aka office and studio.

What would allow AMs greater access to translators and allow for additional LPFMs (even if I think most of them are useless) would be ceasing to allow translators to broadcast any program source that does not have a licensed AM or FM station in the same general coverage area.

That would free up thousands of channels.
 
I think the FCC can solve part of the problem by opening up the FM spectrum down to 76 MHZ like Japan.

Sure most of us would need new radios, but there would be a lot less overcrowding. The non-commercial band can move down to the bottom, and then there would be more above for commercial stations. Also the FCC might wanna allow stations to use even numbers after the decimal like in Europe (92.2, 104.6, etc.)
 
I think the FCC can solve part of the problem by opening up the FM spectrum down to 76 MHZ like Japan.

Sure most of us would need new radios, but there would be a lot less overcrowding.

Most people already buy a new "radio" every two years. They are mostly Galaxy and iPhone models. Folks don't want to buy any additional radios.
 
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