In recent years the FCC has gone to a system where applications for just about any form of broadcast service are only accepted for processing when an "Application Window" is open. If you or I went to the FCC today and tried to apply for an LPFM, our application would not be received. If we then said, fine, "We want to apply for an A.M. station." The answer would be the same. The Applications Window IS NOT OPEN at this time.
In the case of Jean Marius: if you are the known operator of an illegal broadcasting operation you application is not likely to be received even when The Window is Open, and if they do agree to take your application you are likely to be put at the bottom of the list assuming their are other applicants for that same space on the dial.
In my previous message I was suggesting that someone who followed all the rules, applied during an Application Window, built the station withing the Construction Permit time frame and then operated the station for a period of time without violations and complaints should have "a leg up" on the process if the FCC ever decides that improved facilities are justified. When you look at how government "we don't discriminate" rules and policy works, you would probably have to compete with johnny-come-lately applicants for any opening for a new and improved future version of LPFM. With contacts already in place with consulting engineers and communcations lawyers, you would be a step further up on the ladder than most applicants even if the FCC people did you no favors.
If the next 1,000 LPFMs granted do as good a job as a large number of the current existing crop of maybe 800 stations are doing, there will be no next step up. My W.A.G. (hint w = wild, g = guess) is that maybe 80 to 100 current LPFMs are doing something that meets the expectations of the class of stations. The rest get nothing better than a collective yawn.
