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WFSJ - Newark/Columbus OH - Guardian Television Network

First of all, don't you mean "WSFJ"?

Second of all -- source?

Considering that its parent company's about to launch the .2 Network, and since there's nothing about its sale on its website, I don't believe this is true.
 
The item is true...we ran it at OMW back when it first came out.

Basically, Guardian is selling WSFJ to help fund ".2 Network"'s launch. The move means that the "diginet" will likely not air in Columbus on the WSFJ signal, since TBN tends to keep all of its digital subchannels filled with their own stuff.

The Guardian/WSFJ folks hinted at this when ".2" launched, saying the network could air elsewhere in Columbus due to group deals and the like (i.e. if they signed up a group with a Columbus affiliate, it would air there even if WSFJ weren't being sold to TBN).
 
I wish them the best of luck. I hope they sign up more affiliates for .2 soon, as there aren't any yet in my area, and the network does sound worthwhile.
 
Speaking of TBN, they're also buying the new 1 MW digital-only station that's being built in the Denver market (COL: Greeley), KPJR-DT ch. 38. Richland Reserve LLC is selling it. The purchase agreement was drawn up a year ago, but filed with the FCC just yesterday. There were significant contingencies to the sale, including moving the transmitter location and/or broadcast frequency so that the station will also serve the entire Denver metro area. The original CP specified ch 45 and 943 kW from a transmitter site about 15 miles north and 30 miles east of the present site. The CP expires 1/10/2010.

Asset Purchase Agreement
Potential KPJR-DT service area
 
dhett said:
Speaking of TBN, they're also buying the new 1 MW digital-only station that's being built in the Denver market (COL: Greeley), KPJR-DT ch. 38. Richland Reserve LLC is selling it. The purchase agreement was drawn up a year ago, but filed with the FCC just yesterday. There were significant contingencies to the sale, including moving the transmitter location and/or broadcast frequency so that the station will also serve the entire Denver metro area. The original CP specified ch 45 and 943 kW from a transmitter site about 15 miles north and 30 miles east of the present site. The CP expires 1/10/2010.

Asset Purchase Agreement
Potential KPJR-DT service area
Click to expand...

I see from the sale agreement that the purchase price is $37.5 million.

I think I'll crawl off in a corner now...guess who did the original rulemaking that resulted in the channel 45 allotment?
 
" The Commission requests comments on a petition filed by Thomas Desmond proposing the allotment of DTV channel 45 to Greeley, Colorado, as the community’s first local commercial television service. DTV Channel 45 can be allotted to Greeley at reference coordinates 40–25–15 N. and 104–31–30 W."

TexasTom you must be Thomas Desmond?
 
stationi said:
" The Commission requests comments on a petition filed by Thomas Desmond proposing the allotment of DTV channel 45 to Greeley, Colorado, as the community’s first local commercial television service. DTV Channel 45 can be allotted to Greeley at reference coordinates 40–25–15 N. and 104–31–30 W."

TexasTom you must be Thomas Desmond?
Click to expand...

Yup, you got it!

Four years back, when I was back in school and had some extra time on my hands, I took a shot at "do it yourself" rulemakings (ie, without using either a consulting engineer or communications attorney) -- and two of the three rulemakings that I generated were successful. Channel 45 (now 38) in Greeley was one of the successful ones; the other was channel 51 in Medical Lake (Spokane), WA. It was interesting to research and generate the petitions -- and by doing it myself, it was inexpensive. I spent somewhere around $10 on copies and postage, and that was it.

But I have to admit that it gets frustrating seeing other people make a lot of money off my work, while I got nothing out of it except some personal satisfaction.

It's also indicative of a real problem with assigning FM and TV construction permits through spectrum auctions. From what I can tell through admittedly limited research, the original petitioner for a new FM or TV allotment almost never wins the right to build the station in the spectrum auctions. But without the petitioners, the FCC has nothing to auction off. My suspicion is that as that trend becomes clearer, the FCC will find that it has fewer and fewer new FM and TV allotments to auction to the highest bidder...
 
Maybe anyone who is a "qualified entity" (minority and/or small business and/or female owned) who files for an allotment should be eligible for an extra bidding credit if/when that allotment goes to auction.

Ideally, this could help create "localism" (better yet, this extra bidding credit is only available if the entity is willing to commit to 3 hours a week of local programming within 5 years of receiving the license to cover, and this local programming commitment remains attached to the license no matter who buys it). This is no more than is required of a Class A TV station, so prospective full power licensees could hardly argue it was an undue burden.
 
Johnathan said:
Maybe anyone who is a "qualified entity" (minority and/or small business and/or female owned) who files for an allotment should be eligible for an extra bidding credit if/when that allotment goes to auction.
Click to expand...

Good idea, in fact it is already an FCC policy.

New prospective broadcasters who don't already own a station are given a 35% credit. So if they bid $100,000 for a station, they pay just $65,000.
 
Yeah, but I mean an extra credit (perhaps another 25%) given to a bidder who is "qualified" *and* who actually wrote/created the original allotment.

Alternatively, how about an extra 25% for my 3 hour a week localism requirement?

(Then again, I think that auctions are not a great idea to begin with.)
 
DHETT nailed the last of the rulemakings that I did -- the one that wasn't successful. Two out of three isn't bad averages...

Regarding the 35% credit for "qualified" entities, I think it is something of a joke. As inflated as the last TV and FM auctions have been, it provides little real benefit to those who did the original rulemakings -- or, for that matter, most truly small businesses.
 
I can agree, just because someone is a high bidder does not necessarily indicate they can/should/would serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity."
 
TexasTom, hearing about how you got some stations allocated, makes me want to try doing that once the FCC starts accepting them again. I'd be curious to know what's involved in that process.

- Trip
 
tripinva said:
TexasTom, hearing about how you got some stations allocated, makes me want to try doing that once the FCC starts accepting them again. I'd be curious to know what's involved in that process.
Click to expand...

Trip,

What it requires more than anything else is patience -- unless you're willing to shell out for some serious broadcast engineer's software that can substantially automate the process.

The first thing that you'll need is to pull the spacing requirements for DTV channels for whatever region you're looking to do an allotment rulemaking in. With those spacing requirements in hand, I used the FCC's "TV Query" to poke around areas of interest, typing in a set of coordinates (latitude/longitude) and searching for everything within about 300 km of those coordinates. Then you have to manually go through the list that is pulled up and determine if any channel meets all of the spacing requirements at that particular set of coordinates. If you hit paydirt on the first try, save a copy of the list that "TV Query" generated and you'll be ready to start a petition for allocating a new DTV channel at those particular coordinates. More than likely, no channel will meet the spacing criteria on the first attempt, unless you're looking in a fairly isolated area. In that case, you look for a channel that appears to be close and through trial and error you look for a set of coordinates where that channel does clear all of the spacing requirements.

Once you have a channel and a set of coordinates, you'll also need to pick the city of license for the station -- which, really, can be almost any community of a thousand people or more. Preferably, it should be a community that is not part of a metropolitan area, although that won't matter unless your petition is mutually exclusive with someone else's.

As for writing the petition for rulemaking, the easiest way to do that is simply to pull a copy of someone else's successful petitoin and copy their formatting. The petition that I used as a starting point was for a successful DTV rulemaking for channel 3 in Apalachicola, Florida.

Now, as for actually doing all this -- the plus side is that it is a fascinating challenge, and with the work that you've put into tracking DTV station construction permits, petitions, etc, I'm sure that you would find it as fascinating as I did (despite the tedium of the process). But the down side is there as well -- it really is frustrating to put the work into it, sheperd your baby through the FCC's process, and then discover that you have no chance to actually build the station yourself...and possibly, to see the station pass into the hands of a group that you're not especially fond of.
 
Tom:

I've already got some channels picked out that meet spacing requirements--the hard part is deciding which one(s) to try to get allocated!

Send me an e-mail or IM me, my contact info is on my website (in my signature). I'd love to chat on this more.

Thanks. =)

- Trip
 
So Guardian is not getting out of the Columbus TV game entirely. They're in the process of acquiring an LPTV, W23BZ, with a digital flash cut application accepted for filing. http://www.recnet.com/cdbs/fmq.php?call=w23bz&city=&state=&country=US

The analog is not great, but not that bad, and the digital is pretty much a maximized LD (low power digital) that covers the market (as much as a low power station can).

The LPTV comes from National Minority Television, which, as I understand it, is a group owner of many TBN affiliates.

(Found in FCC Daily Digest here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-284519A1.pdf / http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-284519A2.txt )
 
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