LPFM Deal at FCC Won’t be Codified by Media Bureau
Career FCC staffers don’t support a wide-ranging deal between the two most active filers in a 2003 auction of translator stations to resolve a dispute between many operators of the facilities and low-power FM (LPFM) stations, said commission and industry officials. They said Media Bureau officials recently said they won’t move to codify a memorandum of understanding in an existing draft order on Auction No. 83. The agreement was submitted this month by Prometheus Radio Project, representing low-power FM stations, and Educational Media Foundation (EMF), which runs several hundred translators, with the support of two other major applicants for translators in the filing window (CD July 12 p10). Representatives of Prometheus and EMF said they will need to take another look at the agreement if the bureau doesn’t codify it.
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Most of the commissioners were waiting for the agreement before voting on an order circulated March 11 to cap at 10 the translator requests from any applicant that would be considered in the auction, clearing the way for those frequencies to be awarded to low-power stations (CD March 31 p6), commission officials said. Only Commissioner Mignon Clyburn had voted for the order when it circulated, a commission official said. There may be changes to the item before it’s approved by the other commissioners, but the final version probably won’t codify the EMF-Prometheus deal, FCC officials said.
The bureau apparently was concerned that the agreement would put at a disadvantage applicants that, unlike EMF and the two translator supporters, didn’t seek hundreds of those stations in the window, commission officials said. They said those applicants likely would have had to wait to get permission for many of the translators they seek while the bureau processed pending applications -- even with the cap of 10 scrapped as the MOU envisioned -- because low-power stations could make requests of their own. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski hasn’t sought quick action on the draft order, which commissioners may discuss tweaking before it’s approved, agency officials said. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.
The agreement offered benefits for translator operators of all sizes, representatives of EMF and Prometheus said. “In the overall understanding, there are many points that Prometheus has given on that confer advantages on all translator licensees,” said lawyer David Oxenford of Davis Wright, representing EMF. “We would still hope that the commission does what is best in this proceeding.” The deal includes proposals for future auctions that he still hopes the commission will deal with. The MOU envisioned giving priority to future candidates for low-power stations proposing to provide local service over translator applicants, while not allowing LPFMs to involuntarily preempt current or authorized translators.
"If they don’t establish the MOU, it makes it hard to resolve” prioritization, “because you're putting more translators in front of LPFM,” said Vice President Parul Desai of Media Access Project, representing Prometheus. “This MOU would have avoided that fight.” If the commission approves the draft order as is, the group will still seek priorities for LPFMs in the next application window, Desai said. “We'd have to go back and talk to EMF and the other translator” operators if this deal isn’t codified by the commission, she said. “We're definitely disappointed that the current recommendation is not to move forward with the memorandum but to move forward with the item on the eighth floor.”