Howard, you're right about viewing the prospect of the FCC actually doing something about an IBOC adjacent-channel interference case as - well, "dim." But allow me to show you how this game is played:
iBiquity, the Alliance and the lawyer-packed (and engineer-lite) FCC have conspired to create a little jurisdictional Catch-22 designed to prevent precisely the action you propose. If a station victimized by IBOC interference tries to short-circuit the FCC complaint-and-enforcement process and sue the interferor directly, you land immediately into a legal conundrum. Yes: along with trashing the decades-old allocation scheme, distorting the NRSC standards and redefining what "interference" is, the IBOC cabal has thought of this too.
So: you've filed your interference complaint(s) with the Enforcement Bureau - which the Commission staff, deeply in the tank for iBiquity, has resolutely spiked. They'll pretend like they never received it. If you press individual staff members, they will counsel you to approach the interferor to "try to work something out." The interferors, knowing they hold all the cards, give you the finger. What the FCC WON'T do: take any action one way or other other.
Your proposed case against the interfering station lands you in Federal court, because radio waves don't respect state borders and are thus by definition "interstate commerce." Under Federal court rules, since Congress has given the FCC exclusive jurisdiction over the EM spectrum, you can't seek relief in Federal court until you have "exhausted administrative remedies." Your complaint is still pending (recall, the FCC hasn't given you relief or dismissed it.) Nor will they: if they grant you relief and order the offending station to reduce digital power or turn off the IBOC, they've just killed HD, which they don't want to do. If they dismiss your complaint, they've greenlighted a Federal interference lawsuit which will also kill HD (nobody is going to install an expensive system which could either get them sued or which the FCC might order them to turn off.) So - voila! The FCC sits on your complaint. Neat, huh?
Of course, with the passage of time, the argument "you haven't exhausted administrative remedies" gets thinner and thinner, so you could head to court to point out that the FCC has spiked your complaint for a year or two - and these days, you could also add the argument that the FCC has NEVER taken action on ANY IBOC interference complaint (and notwithstanding a recent post here by The Cuyahoga Tejano alleging otherwise, there have been scores of them.)
I believe that sooner or later somebody is going to sue over IBOC interference, and that becomes more likely with the pending HD-FM digital power increase. This time around, we're not talking about disused AM facilities but high-billing FMs worth tens of millions. When the stakes get high enough, it's gonna happen. But it will have to be a major player with resources, since litigating just the threshold jurisdictional issue could cost tens of thousands - with no guarantee of success, of course. Then the ensuing lawsuit - promising as it does to be highly technical and hard to get a judge to understand or care about - could easily run to $250K in legal fees.
But with a big major-market high-billing FM it could easily be worth it. And THAT, boys and girls, will mark The End of IBOC. The HD loons are sowing the seeds of their own demise with this nitwit digital increase - so I say, bring it! When -10 dBc doesn't improve coverage, let's go to -4! -2!
