Four applicants are in the running in the contest to build an AM station in Rockland County NY to assure that there will be emergency broadcast service for residents near the Indian Point nuclear power plant.
At this point in the proceeding, the applicants have a window in which they may file technical modifications to their application, which are all for a facility on 1700 kHz, or to negotiate among one another in order to determine a winner by settlement. The deadline for these types of maneuvers is 12/9/09. Settlement proposals must be accompanied by affidavits from all parties to the settlement.
Since the allocation of the station is specifically for the purpose of serving the people in the area of the power plant, we suspect that the odds of finding a technical solution that would allow more than one station to be built and eliminate mutual exclusivity at the same time to be rather slim, but that route is mentioned by the FCC.
If neither of these possibilities results in determining a winning applicant, it will go to auction.
The applicants are S&B Broadcasting Company, proposing a station in Stony Point Town NY; Talkline Communications Corporation, proposing a station in Monsey NY; Alexander Broadcasting Inc., proposing a station in Ramapo NY; and Polnet Communications Ltd., proposing a station in Haverstraw NY.
The area in question is along the Hudson River in the lower portion of upstate New York, not far from New Jersey.
RBR-TVBR observation: It’s not every day that the China Syndrome is the basis for a station auction, although of course there could be a lesser event that would warrant evacuating the area just in case. But the winner must be prepared to cover an event it sincerely hopes never takes place.
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In the Carson City area of Nevada a few years ago, there was a fire so close to their local radio station, burning ON a major 'frontage' throughway and quite literally from north to south Carson, that one could 'almost' hit a golf ball to the fire line where the station is at. The 'local' radio station aired information for the first four hours of the first day, then only 'cursory' information at the top of the hour the rest of the day, when, the station was open for business. Once they closed and went to automation that evening, then, for the rest of the week one only heard an update if the 'news crew' was there making a recording in the 'morning' to be used for the 'rest' of the day, airing their 'generic music' type network programing otherwise.
The Reno 'EAS' service radio also only had major updates when they were 'local' broadcasting, then only a 'sound bite' type blurb for the minute allotted at the 'top of the hour' newscasts for them the rest of the time.
Only the television stations out of Reno did a good coverage until the fire was out, making sure that any warnings of voluntary and mandatory evacuations were being put out.
Nice, when you can feel the heat from the fire for being so close to the front line that you do not stay local on air to keep your own community informed of what is going on with the fire. Hopefully the station being planned for the 'nuke site' will do better than ours if a disaster happens.
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