In advance of the August 1, 2019 FCC Open Meeting, the Commission has adopted the LPFM technical Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, MB Docket 19-193.  This item is expected to include the following proposed changes:

What this petition will do:

• This petition opens up an opportunity for over 2,000 local communities that are currently shut out from having local noncommercial educational broadcast services to be able to obtain the ability to construct and operate a broadcast facility that is “right-sized” for their community.
• This petition provides the assurances to the local communities that their allocation is primary and is not subject to displacement based on the application activity of larger stations, such as those in the urbanized area.
• This petition will provide first aural service to smaller qualified communities while continuing to honor the Commission’s mandate to fair and equitable distribution of licenses among the states and communities.

The Federal Communications Commission released a Public Notice announcing a Petition for Rulemaking from REC Networks and has assigned in RM-11846.

In this Petition for rulemaking, REC is asking for relief for rural communities that currently do not have any radio broadcast stations licensed to them in order to obtain a new lower-powered broadcast station in the upcoming filing window for NCE stations. 

In the Petition for Reconsideration filed by The LPFM Coalition (LPFM/C) in MB Docket 18-119, the translator interference proceeding, LPFM/C raises some very excellent points in respect to the decisions made by the Commission in the proceeding. 

While FM translators must protect existing LPFM stations using prohibited overlap, it is REC's position that the disparity between LPFM's use of distance separation and FM translator use of the contour model does raise an LCRA Section 5 issue where translators are overprotected by LPFM stations by as much as 10 times the area that they are entitled to in cases where a translator's directional pattern can be used to protect an LPFM but LPFM stations must protect a translator as they are a non-directional facility.