WXXL and WMGF "city of licenses"

[byron]

Saw a mention of WMGF Mount Dora in a press release, and it's reminded me of question I've wanted to ask here for a while.....

Why are WXXL and WMGF still licensed to Tavares* and Mount Dora, respectively? (I know the history of both signals, no need to explain down to that level.)

Is it because they're the last FM signal with a commercial license in each city, and so the FCC wouldn't allow them to relocate the COL?
Is it because they need to COL to remain as-is for a DMA/coverage area requirement? (Doubting this already as I type it)
Or is it just because COL doesn't matter so much anymore, so just leave the license info where it is?

...Just marking this one off the bucket list of odd questions to ask. Thanks

*Yes WXXL was once COL'ed to Leesburg. For quite a while after the ex-WLBE days, before "move" to Tavares in the 90's. (IIRC)

Byron

 

[seattlesarchiebunker]

Mostly the latter. WMGF covers Mt Dora nicely from their tower site. No need to move the COL closer to Orlando. I do believe they are hemmed in pretty well at their tower site. In addition, they’d have to find another radio station to switch its COL to Mt Dora as I do believe they are the only licensed signal in that community.

In addition, you get “points” with the FCC for establishing a station with a COL that did not have a station before. My guess is that’s why WXXL “moved” to Tavares.

 

[Kmagrill]

Mostly the latter. WMGF covers Mt Dora nicely from their tower site. No need to move the COL closer to Orlando. I do believe they are hemmed in pretty well at their tower site. In addition, they’d have to find another radio station to switch its COL to Mt Dora as I do believe they are the only licensed signal in that community.

In addition, you get “points” with the FCC for establishing a station with a COL that did not have a station before. My guess is that’s why WXXL “moved” to Tavares.

For decades the FCC did prefer adding a new service to a community vs adding an additional service to another nearby community that was larger. Sometimes, being tied to a particular town meant that stations couldn't upgrade. I know of a class A station that could have upgraded to a C3 or even a C2, but they couldn't put a city grade signal over their community of license from the necessary location. So, the FCC denied the upgrade since there were no other stations licensed to that city. However, the city of license is a bedroom community of a larger town with lots of licenses and the target community gets plenty of radio service, even if the legal ID doesn't specifically mention the bedroom community. At the time, the only option was to find another station willing to change their COL to the bedroom community. If there are two or more stations licensed to a town, then the FCC will permit one to move away.

WXXL moved to Tavares for the same reason as that class A station, except that there were other stations in Leesburg, so WXXL was allowed to change city of license. When they upgraded, they covered Orlando much better, but could no longer cover Leesburg with a city grade signal, so they picked Tavares.

A few years ago, under Wheeler, the FCC made substantial changes to this policy. They concluded that most stations are in larger markets and, once in a "market", moving around within that market probably doesn't make much difference. The FCC was looking at the number of rural stations trying to move into urban areas and enacted a policy that stations couldn't move into areas where they served substantially more people while at the same time abandoning their originally licensed community. By inference, then, stations inside of urbanized markets should be able to move around with impunity since the FCC has stated in their order that the presumption is that communities within urbanized areas are more or less uniform and individual community names are meaningless. So, Orlando, Pine Hills, Altamonte Spgs, Lake Mary, Longwood and so forth should be considered one community under the FCC's eyes.

I'm not sure if the rule about being the only station licensed to a town is still in effect, but if it is, then that's why these stations still identify with their earlier licensed towns. They can only change that if there's a second station licensed to the town, too. Under the FCC's recent policy change, this doesn't make much sense, but sometimes the ramifications of policy changes aren't obvious for a while.

 

[byron]

Got it. Thank you both for settling this question for me. History and insight are appreciated!

Byron

 

[fybush]

The "Urbanized Area" rule the FCC adopted a few years ago is still keeping us consultants busy. Kyle's quite correct above - the presumption now is that anything licensed to any community in a Census-defined "urbanized area" is serving the entire area, not just the individual small community. The first-service rule goes away in UAs, so in theory, yes, WXXL could leave "Tavares" even without anything else licensed there - the presumption is that WXXL serves the entire Orlando UA.

So why not change COL? The better question, perhaps, is why change? Changing COL involves an FCC filing, which requires showings and maps and all that good stuff that people like me get paid to do. And for what? So you can say "WXXL Orlando" very quietly once an hour instead of "WXXL Tavares"? The signal already covers the whole region and won't change with a new COL. The main studio rule is gone, so you no longer have to show that your studio is within 25 miles of the COL (or within the 60 dBu contour of the signal).

It's simply not worth what it would cost, most likely, to make the change.

(And you can't make the change for signals that wouldn't cover the new COL, so you can't take, say, 1580 Bithlo and magically make it an "Orlando" signal, even if it's all within the Orlando UA.)

 

[davideduardo]

So why not change COL? The better question, perhaps, is why change? Changing COL involves an FCC filing, which requires showings and maps and all that good stuff that people like me get paid to do. And for what? So you can say "WXXL Orlando" very quietly once an hour instead of "WXXL Tavares"? The signal already covers the whole region and won't change with a new COL. The main studio rule is gone, so you no longer have to show that your studio is within 25 miles of the COL (or within the 60 dBu contour of the signal).

It's simply not worth what it would cost, most likely, to make the change.

And the station can, if it wants, say "WXXL Tavares - Orlando"

Or even "WXXL Tavares, Orlando and Daytona".

Didn't Tavares record "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel"?

Ancecdote time: long ago I managed WUNO Rio Piedras, PR. It was so long ago, we still had to do a legal ID on the hour and half hour. "Rio Piedras" was annexed by San Juan a decade prior, so it did not exist. I wanted to be able to say "San Juan" and not the somewhat negative "Rio Piedras". We filed a request for the change, and the FCC came back requiring notarized copies of the annexation act and a legal translation with a sworn affidavit. Overall, it cost over $2,000 back when a GM in that market made about that much a month... in other words, a lot of money.