> Even though his frequency would remain the same, the fact
> that he wants
> to change location of city of license to over 1000 miles
> away would
> put the change under a MAJOR license change which would
> require the
> auction procedure because the station literally becomes a
> new facility.
> There are a lot more things involved as well. This just will
> not be
> allowed to happen.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. (It's also very lucrative for the consultants who come in to help fix things, so I'm not complaining...)
ANY change of city of license is a major change, whether it's to the next town over or across the country. A change of frequency greater than +/- 30 kHz is a major change.
However, the station wouldn't become a new facility, "literally" or otherwise, in the eyes of the FCC. Nor would it automatically go to auction.
What triggers an auction proceeding during an FCC AM major change window (the last one of which was in early 2004) is an application becoming part of a "mutually exclusive," or "MX" group. This means exactly what it sounds like: the application, while technically grantable, would conflict with one or more other applications that have been filed during the same window. In some cases, these conflicts can stretch across many hundreds of miles. There were applications filed in the last window for stations in Las Vegas that ended up as part of huge (150+ applicants) MX groups that extended all the way to Texas.
The FCC allows applicants who become part of MX groups limited opportunities to settle disputes among themselves, amending or withdrawing their applications to remove or reduce the conflicts. Only if the parties to an MX group are unable to resolve it through the settlement procedure will the matter then go to auction.
That said: as other posters have noted, any attempt to move the 1400 from Fort Payne to New York would be tossed out immediately as technically ungrantable, with overlapping interference to a whole slew of stations including WSTC in Connecticut, WEOK in Poughkeepsie, WHTG in New Jersey, WKDM New York, WNSW Newark, etc. etc. etc.
In general, when you see a license being moved long distances, it's for only one reason: since the FCC no longer grants new class D (daytime-only) licenses, the only way to put a "new" class D signal on the air, if you find a big market where one will fit, is to take an existing class D license in a small town and relocate it. (There are also isolated instances where a licensee will move a fulltime signal simply to get it out of the way of an upgrade to another station, as has happened around Chicago.)
The bottom line: in pretty much any market of any size that you can name, if there's a spot on the dial for a fulltime signal, it's already in use. If you want to be on the air, you pay the price for an existing license, and since they're not making any new ones, those prices just keep going up.<P ID="signature">______________
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