Before the Federal Communications Commission Washington, D.C.
In the matter of:
) Revitalization of the AM Radio Service ) MB Docket No. 13-249 )
COMMENTS OF SCOTT FYBUSH
Scott Fybush hereby submits these comments in response to the Commission’s Oct. 21, 2015 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the above-captioned proceeding:
QUALIFICATIONS
Fybush has worked in and around AM radio since 1991, as a journalist at WKOX(AM), Framingham, Massachusetts, WCAP(AM), Lowell, Massachusetts, WBZ(AM), Boston, Massachusetts and WXXI(AM), Rochester, N.Y. As a journalist and analyst covering the broadcast industry, Fybush has edited or written for trade publications including The Radio Journal, Radio World, Radio Guide, Current, and since 1994 his own NorthEast Radio Watch1, covering broadcast engineering, technology, regulatory and business issues. As a consultant, Fybush has advised station owners and groups on signal improvement and acquisition strategy. Through his website TranslatorSale.com, Fybush has assisted station owners in buying and selling FM translators during the “AM Revitalization” window that opened in January 2016. Since 2000, Fybush has profiled broadcast facilities on the weekly Tower Site of the Week page and in the annual “Tower Site Calendar,” with special attention to the history of AM transmission in the United States. He has visited and studied thousands of
1 http://www.fybush.com/ broadcast facilities from coast to coast. Fybush (hereinafter, “Commenter”) is a member of trade and hobby organizations including the Society of Broadcast Engineers, the National Radio Club and the Worldwide TV-FM DX Association. His comments here are strictly his own.
A. MODIFY AM PROTECTION STANDARDS
1. Nighttime and critical hours protection standards for class A stations
Commenter here reiterates his comments from the initial notice of proposed rulemaking: while most class A stations themselves now derive little or no economic benefit from their vast skywave coverage areas at night, the Commission should move with extreme caution on any proposal to further limit that coverage. The history of AM broadcast regulation in the United States is replete with examples of well-intentioned changes that have increased the number of stations on the air without giving due deference to the realities of propagation in the medium-wave spectrum. The current proposal, while equally well-intentioned, threatens to diminish useful class A service while offering little real-world improvement to other stations’ signals in return.
Skywave in the real world of 2016
While skywave coverage from class A signals is no longer the sole means of providing broadcast service to rural communities, as it was as recently as the 1950s, it is and should remain a protected service for two reasons. First and foremost is the physical reality of skywave. For all of the engineering attempts that have been made going back as far as the 1920s and 1930s to reduce the phenomenon, the laws of physics dictate that at wavelengths in the hundreds of meters, medium-wave signals inevitably carry for hundreds or thousands of miles at night. No attempt to create an antenna design to suppress this skywave element has ever been truly successful; moreover, the majority of class A AM stations in the United States operate from antennas designed in the 1930s and 1940s, which were in large part explicitly designed to maximize skywave, as was desirable at the time.2 As the instant rulemaking proceeding demonstrates in a subsequent section, the Commission itself acknowledges the reality of skywave propagation in its ongoing attempt to craft sensible rules to determine the effects created by incoming skywave interference into a class B station’s local groundwave signal at night. Unlike other propagation methods such as groundwave or VHF line-of-sight, medium-wave skywave is intrinsically variable. The Commission recognizes this by using 50% reliability in many of its skywave calculations. This, of course, means that 50% of the time an incoming skywave signal will be stronger than predicted – and often much stronger.3 This will have a significant deleterious effect on local-market service of class B or D stations hoping for increased usable coverage as a result of the proposed decrease in protection to co-channel class A signals. As the Commission should have learned from previous attempts to grant blanket increases in power levels (most notably the class IV/class C nighttime increase to 1000 watts), the reality of skywave propagation serves as a real-world limitation on the benefit of such incremental power gains. While an individual class D station might gain some useful new coverage in its local area were it the only such station to boost power against a co-channel class A at a distance, the cumulative effect of multiple such increases will be far less beneficial. Broadcast-band DXers are already well aware of the ability of even a single class D station on a “clear” channel to create a wide area of destructive interference by operating with day facilities at night.4 The effect of multiple such new
2 Having documented nearly all of the class A broadcast facilities in the U.S., commenter believes the newest class A transmitter facility in the US is WOR, New York, constructed in 2006. The oldest are WLW, Cincinnati and WSM, Nashville, constructed in 1932. The vast majority were constructed or reconstructed (generally converted to vertical antennas from longwires) just before or after World War II. 3 As many AM operators found, to their dismay, when attempting to implement “IBOC” digital transmissions over the past decade. It is notable that in the time since the Commission last requested AM comments, still more AM stations have discontinued nighttime digital operation, most notably WBZ Boston, whose sidebands on its 1030 kHz signal had a negative real-world impact on local coverage at co- owned KDKA, Pittsburgh. 4 Commenter lives in Rochester, New York, approximately 70 air miles from the transmitter site of class A WWKB, Buffalo. While WWKB generally provides a usable signal at this location, it has in recent years suffered occasional interference from a station commenter has identified as KRHW, Sikeston, MO, licensed to operate at 1.6 kW night with a directional antenna but apparently instead operating at 5 kW daytime facilities with a far less restrictive directional pattern. Were KRHW to be allowed such operation legally at night, along with other stations on 1520, WWKB would be entirely unusable here. operations will be even worse, creating cacophony over a broad area where there is now useful secondary service. – and, even more critically, raising the noise floor in such a way as to wipe out a significant portion of the coverage gain any individual station would otherwise obtain. Worse yet, that increased noise floor would in turn have a deleterious effect on useful groundwave coverage of the class A operators in their own local market areas. As the Commission itself has acknowledged in crafting its current ownership limits for radio, Nielsen-defined ratings markets are the units in which large-market stations now function economically. The boundaries of these markets are generally determined by the largest FM signals in those markets, which has created sprawling markets in which few AM signals can fully compete. Until now, class A stations have been the exception to that rule. In Atlanta, for instance, WSB is the only AM signal that comes even close to covering the Nielsen- defined market; the same is true of KFI and KNX in Los Angeles, WBAP and KRLD in Dallas-Fort Worth and many others.5 Yet at the edges of those Nielsen markets, even class A stations’ signals suffer from rising electrical noise floors and often fall below 10 mV/m, the level that many industry experts now consider a minimum usable signal in today’s RF environment.6 Adding new sources of incoming skywave interference, thereby raising noise floors under class A stations’ local groundwave signals, is a step backward, potentially threatening these stations’ status as the last remaining AMs that can fully compete economically with large-market, full-coverage FMs.
Emergency Coverage and Rural Service
Degrading the coverage of class A AM facilities will also have an irreversible detrimental effect on emergency service. While there are now multiple sources of entertainment and news programming such as satellite Internet, 3G/4G/LTE wireless or
5 Commenter observes this personally on frequent trips to a family residence in the village of Montebello in Rockland County, NY. This community is in the New York City Nielsen market, some 35 miles northwest of Manhattan. The only New York City AM stations that are completely usable on typical consumer radios at that location are all class A signals: WFAN, WOR, WABC, WCBS, WBBR. 6 Commenter here endorses in full the relevant comments of the Society of Broadcast Engineers with respect to the urgent need for greater Commission action to regulate the overall MW noise floor. satellite radio and TV available to citizens in even the most rural parts of the United States, these alternatives to AM skywave all share two common traits. First, they are all controlled by private, for-profit companies that charge monthly or annual fees for access and lack the universal public service obligations to which broadcasters are bound. Second, their proprietary receivers cease to function in the absence of power from the grid. By contrast, AM skywave coverage is free, ubiquitous and as close to indestructible as any medium in communications history. At almost any location in the continental US, a class A skywave signal can be received after dark on even the simplest of emergency radio, including simple crank-up and battery-powered radios that can run for hours or even days on a charge. While one hopes sincerely that the need never arises, class A AM broadcasters are likely to be the last communications media still standing in case of massive destruction or war. In the meantime, in non-emergency situations, those class A signals still provide news and talk programming to rural and tribal areas on a nightly basis at no monthly fee. This is a valuable service that should not be permanenly disrupted to provide a relatively small gain in a handful of local areas at the expense of wider overall interference. If anything, as commenter has stated earlier, the Commission should continue to explore the use of higher powers by class A stations, as already allowed under the Rio treaty. While the Commission’s general presumption of preference for local broadcast is admirable, it is misplaced in this particular example. In the event of a major emergency, especially overnight, stations in smaller communities are overwhelmingly likely to be operating unstaffed.7 Most class A stations, by contrast, have programming and news personnel on staff 24/7 and can quickly begin local coverage or go to network news coverage in the event of a major national or regional emergency. Furthermore, should a local class B or D station have the ability to cover a major local emergency, the Commission’s existing rules already allow for emergency coverage using daytime facilities should that need arise.
7 Even the finest of local newsrooms, such as WDEV in Waterbury, Vermont, go dark at night. In the event of a middle-of-the-night emergency affecting rural Vermont, class A stations such as WCBS New York or WBZ Boston would likely be the most relevant sources for immediate news coverage. Even in a non- emergency situation, those stations are the only broadcast sources for regional news and weather during the overnight hours. Commenter is deeply sympathetic to the frustrations of local class B and D stations on class A channels that desire better local coverage for evening programming such as high school sports. The Commission’s decision to expand use of the FM translator service for this purpose is, on balance, a more efficient use of spectrum than further congesting class A channels that can, should (and, based on the laws of physics, must) be used to reach wider areas after dark if they are to be used in the best way possible.8
B. REVISE RULE ON SITING OF FM CROSS-SERVICE FILL-IN TRANSLATORS
Commenter supports the Commission’s proposal to modify this rule to allow for FM translators located within the greater of either an AM station’s 2 mV/m contour or a 25-mile radius. This change will allow more efficient use of spectrum in areas where a translator must now be directional in order to protect the lesser contour, especially where it would otherwise benefit an AM station already hampered by a tightly directional AM pattern.
E. REQUIRE SURRENDER OF LICENSES BY DUAL EXPANDED BAND/STANDARD BAND LICENSES
In a long litany of well-intentioned FCC allocations actions, few have gone as far astray as the AM expanded band. In the 20 years since the first expanded-band stations signed on, the program has accomplished little that it set out to do. After an initial flush of applicants and permittees, the Commission appeared to have informally decided to stop any further population of the expanded band unless forced to do so by Congress, as in the case of WRCR, Ramapo, NY, the only new expanded-band AM in this century. Meanwhile, frequencies reserved for applicants in the initial expanded-band proceediing
8 In furtherance of that goal, commenter here reiterates his earlier support for additional relaxation of FM translator rules, including a contour-based approach in which FM ERP can exceed 250 watts when broadcast from antennas at lower height. were left fallow if assigned broadcasters chose not to use them, leaving entire regions such as New England and upstate New York devoid of any expanded-band operations. As even the Commission itself has acknowledged, the expanded-band program accomplished little to none of the interference reduction on the standard band that was intended. In particular, the Commission’s failed to “salt the ground,” as it were, on standard-band facilities that were replaced by expanded-band operations. That meant that some of the facilities that were supposed to have gone silent for interference reduction ended up returning to the air under new ownership in subsequent windows for new AM facilities.9 In the meantime, the Commission’s two-decade record of inaction has allowed a handful of broadcasters to maintain dual operation on both the standard and expanded bands. Had the Commission acted more quickly to resolve some of the concerns and questions raised early on about continued dual operation, and had it been consistent about keeping abandoned standard-band channels permanently empty, it might now have a better case to finally end extended dual-band operation. Instead, its inaction has created what amounts to an adverse possession situation in which some dual-band operators have built lengthy track records of continued useful service to ethnic communities. To now force those stations to leave the air may be “fair” in a strict legalistic sense, but would ultimately fail to serve the public interest by removing service that has otherwise been of value, while providing only the most minimally incremental interference reduction, especially in the context of the rest of the changes to AM interference standards herein proposed. In short: the problems with the expanded band are as much of the Commission’s own making as anyone’s, and the small number broadcasters who have soldiered on with dual operation while waiting for a final resolution to this issue ought to be allowed to continue providing services which their audiences have come to expect. A reasonable
9 DKADZ, Arvada, CO (FIN: 54743) discontinued operations on 1550 kHz, supplanted by KDDZ (now KDMT, FIN 86619) on 1690 kHz; 1550 was then reoccupied by what is now KKCL, Golden CO (FIN 161314). At a lower nighttime power than the former KADZ, KKCL provides service to a smaller area while still causing interference over a proportionally larger area than did its predecessor on the frequency. It is difficult to square this new facility’s being licensed with any serious attempt to reduce overall AM band inteference. compromise here, as proposed by several such licensees, would be to condition renewal of dual-band operation on the sale or donation of one of the licenses to a minority entity.
NOTICE OF INQUIRY
A. UTILIZATION OF AM EXPANDED BAND
Going forward, the Commission could and should then impose and enforce stricter rules regarding dual operation. As Canadian regulators do when transitioning AM licensees to FM, standard-band AMs seeking to move to the expanded band should be granted at most a limited period of 90 days or three months to transition listeners through dual operation. Instead of the current one-size-fits-all standard of mileage spacing and 10 kW/1 kW non-directional operation, new expanded-band operations should be allocated according to the same class B and C spacing rules that govern the rest of the AM band, with a goal of harmonizing the expanded-band rules with the rest of the Commission’s AM rules. This will provide for more efficient use of spectrum by allowing closer spacing in areas of lower ground conductivity. First preference for expanded-band operation should go to AM broadcasters who have been unable to secure FM translator facilities, particularly class D operators for whom expanded-band AM operation may be a last opportunity to get the 24-hour service they need in a world in which all other media operate on a 24-hour schedule. Expanded-band operators (both new and existing) should also be encouraged in every way possible to experiment with all-digital operation to provide a more complete record on which the Commission can base future rules for such broadcasts.
B. RELAXED MAIN STUDIO REQUIREMENTS
Commenter is in favor of this proposal, albeit with a cautious eye toward the ways in which the NCE FM version of the main studio waiver has been exploited far beyond its original intent. The Commission now routinely grants waivers for certain large national noncommercial FM operators without any actual consideration of their finances; as a result, some such licensees are now able to obtain waivers for full class B signals in top- ten radio markets, claiming financial hardship even after paying millions of dollars out of pocket to acquire full-market signals from commercial operators. A waiver program that was originally intended to benefit statewide public radio networks and shoestring operators has thus become an unintentional automatic giveaway allowing nonprofit entities to book tens of millions of dollars in annual donor revenue without making any of the local staffing commitments now expected of even the smallest AM operator. (Ironically, some of the largest such operators have used that financial windfall to become major competitors to small AM religious broadcasters, negatively affecting those small operators’ viability in the marketplace.) To the extent that the Commission ought to relieve small AM operators of some of those responsibilities, it should also protect against similar abuses. A legally-staffed main studio ought, therefore, to at least exist within a certain mileage radius (say, 150 or 200 miles) of the waivered station, and the waiver program should be available only to small businesses with a maximum total number of employees. The Commission should also examine the record of its NCE FM waiver program with an eye toward imposing similar rules to rein in the largest operators who have inadvertently benefited from near- automatic waivers in that service.
Respectfully submitted, March 21, 2016
Scott Fybush 92 Bonnie Brae Avenue Rochester NY 14618 585-442-5411 [email protected]