o -Power Community TV What's Happening Dear Editor: In your recent article of 'LPTV Station Crosses Signals with City Hall', you sound as if the Sioux Falls The LPTV publication industry (if you can call it station will be running movies from the video rental that) dwindles further. the LPTV Reporter published store. Is that legal? If so, we LPTV operators will by Michael Couzens (who was one of the fathers of have a great selection of movies to choose from.

LPTV) bit the dust last month, and we are making good I am quite interested to learn what you are doing on filling out the subscriptions to his publication in this respect. that were not yet expired, so welcome to those new Yours truly, readers. Radio Station Owner Michael finally decided he had to practice law to Dear Reader: make a living-the LPTV portion was little more than The tapes we rent are mostly late releases which one disappointment after another and a financial drain. are not available for TV. However, we do rent 85 He is writing a report for us this month about the public domain (copyright allowed to expire) movies, goings-on in San Francisco on the 15th and the getting and we also use them on TV. There are hundreds of together of two new LPTV associations. these available and are a lot of big name actors, such as We used to publish several manuals on how to the several Ronald Reagan movies we ran on election do this or that in low power, but we learned that the night. FCC changes the rules and game plan so often that, before you get them all written and printed, they are already obsolete. For example, we just threw out Possibly, before we print this, I will have seen 800 LPTV tier maps, compiled and printed at great Sony's new portable projection unit (we are waiting expense. Four books, such as 'How to File' your own for a story about the LPTV associations getting together application for LPTV were thrown out long ago after in San Francisco on the 15th). Available only for five supplements couldn't correct the numerous industrial, it was not shown at the CES in Las Vegas. changes. Projection units so far have been three projection tubes overlapped. Sony has developed a new system (ingenious) that uses one tube at super brightness. How it gets three colors is tricky. It comes in a small, TV Programming Newsletter reports that the portable case and can project on a wall, etc., almost First Bank and Trust Company of Mountain Home, any size. It comes with a built-in Beta player for Arkansas, filed suit over loans made to K43AJ in around $3,000. $2,100 without. (Subject to discounts, Mountain Home they claim aren't paid to the tune of of course.) It is designed and sold now primarily $383,393 from American Broadcasting Systems, Inc., for industrial use or demonstrating a product, etc. of Searcy, Arkansas. Reported in the offing is a sale I have not seen it yet but expect to on the 17th. This of the station, as well as an LPTV in Ponca City and device opens up a lot of possibilities if it is as good as the rights to a Searcy station. All local programming I hear it is. Also, I understand it can do rear screen was canceled this fall with SPN satellite feed con- (it can make the words backwards so they read right tinued. The station had carried considerable local from the front). programming, including sports. The station started programming in January of 1983. Editor's Note: Funny, no one ever hears much about the successful, low budget LPTV stations. Pete Warren was one of the first on the air (in Alamo- gordo, NM), and he used relatively inexpensive Beta 1 -inch studio gear, traded out a good part of his start-up costs and paid off the little over $100,000 start-up costs in less than a year. Pete has put several others on since with similar success. Recently, called him on another subject and casually asked him as an afterthought why he thought so many LPTV stations had folded, and he said, 'It's because they don't know what they are doing'.

Frankly, I was so impressed with Super Beta (Sony's new higher resolution 1/2 -inch Beta) that I'd seriously consider making my next LPTV an all Beta Lo -Power Community Television magazine is 1/2 -inch Super Beta, especially if you can get a combo published 12 times per year. Sample copies are $5, Super Beta and Beta Hi-Fi- in the same units. subscriptions $50 per year. Intended to supply needed Pete Warren's station in Alamogordo, NM, uses information on low power television at reasonable all Beta 1/2 -inch successfully and Super Beta is far cost. Copyright (s)1984 by Lo-Power Community better than the old Beta. We still do not have enough Television Publishing. Editor: Harlan L. Jacobsen. details to talk intelligently, but remember, you heard Postmaster: send address changes to 7432 East about it here first. Diamond, Scottsdale, AZ 85257. (602) 945-6746. Reprinted from BM/E (Broadcast Management/ interpreting the Engineering), November 1984. FCC rules ri regulations The New Window System: A Well -Intentioned Mistake? by Harry Cole, FCC Counsel having called the world's attention to that fact, the "A" cutoff date affords all interested persons a 30 -day period in which to prepare and file competing applications for The Nineteenth Century had its land rushes and its gold themselves. The result is that even if the idea of filing for a rushes. Now, if a recent Commission proposal is adopted. was unique to one applicant, that the Twentieth Century may have its own FM and TV particular community applicant is forced by the Commission to share the idea, frequency rushes. The result would be a new approach to and then to compete with everyone else who happens to the process of filing applications for new commercial agree that it's a good idea. And to make matters even stations in those services, an approach which could have a apparently believes that some of significant effect on strategies underlying decisions gov- worse, the Commission applicants who file competing applications on the erning whether or not to file for new FM or TV stations. the do not, in fact, want the station, but The proposed system would replace the current system "A" cutoff date instead want only to blackmail the original applicant by involving cutoff dates and cutoff lists. As you are prob- standing in the way of a quick and simple grant. The idea, ably aware, at present the Commission allocates FM and of course, is that the original applicant may be inclined to TV channels to specific communities. Once a channel is buy the competing applicant in order to avoid the fuss allocated, you are free to apply for it. There is no deadline off (not to mention the expense) of a comparative hearing. for filing the first application, and there is technically no and to get the grant that much sooner. requirement at all that anyone ever file for any particular channel (although the Commission does assume in al- Not all of this situation is the FCC's fault. Back in the locating each channel that at least one applicant will 1940s, in a case called Ashbacker v. FCC, 326 U.S. 327 ultimately file for it). Once someone does file an accept- (1945), the Supreme Court interpreted the Communica- able application specifying a particular channel, that ap- tions Act of 1934 as establishing a right to comparative plication is placed on an "A" cutoff list and assigned an consideration for competing applicants. In other words. "A" cutoff date. That cutoff date represents the deadline the Court said that where two or more applications mutu- by which anyone interested in filing a mutually exclusive ally exclusive with one another are filed, the Commission application must have his or her application on file. (lt cannot simply grant one and deny the rest without first also represents the deadline for petitions to deny the listed holding a comparative hearing involving all the applica- application, although, in the context of the FCC's recent tions. Thus, the FCC has been left to devise some system proposal, we need not dwell on that aspect here.) by which all potential mutually exclusive applicants are Under the existing system, once the "A" cutoff date given an opportunity to get