At first glance, it looks like a battle of behemoths. Citadel wants to move KFME-FM Garden City MO into the Kansas City market; CBS and Entercom want the move blocked. The FCC allowed a favorable tower placement for the station despite predictive studies placing the TL too far from Garden City to lay down 70 dBu coverage based on the results of an alternative predictive technique. Citadel claimed smooth terrain makes its preferred Independence MO site viable, and the study was confirmed by FCC engineers. The case was closed and the CBS/Entercom objection dismissed.
However, Michael Copps, assenting to the decision on grounds that it was technically accurate, wondered why local terrain was not taken into account the same way in a New Hampshire decision, where a mountain would seemingly have prevented a station from serving its city of license from a preferred TL, over the objections of a competitor.
“The only way to make sense of this approach,” wrote Copps, “is that the Commission permits alternative showings where they enable broadcasters to move farther from their local communities, but bars them where they could keep broadcasters close to home.” He feels that the current decision is most likely a slap at the citizens of Garden City, who are more likely to have a Kansas City station than a true Garden City station licensed to their community (although he admits he has no idea how Citadel will program the station).
He sees it as one more technique, however, to thwart the concept of localism. “It is the result of countless steps – some large, some small — that incrementally shift the center of gravity until we wake up one day and wonder where we are and how we got there. That’s why the localism problem can’t be fixed overnight and why the issues can’t be cordoned off in a single ‘localism’ proceeding.”
RBR/TVBR observation: When regulation tries to reconcile apples with oranges, craziness may ensue. In this case, the apple is a political boundary, or even a market boundary, and the orange is a station’s coverage contour, which does not recognize political or market boundaries. Add in extremely strong business impulses, which dictate that one direct programming to where the most people are if at all possible, and we have a witch’s brew just waiting to bubble over. Lest we think this is a simple matter of letting private businesses do what they wish, note that in both of the cases Copps cited, and in many more similar cases, there are business interests both strongly in favor and opposed to the TL action. The best the FCC can hope to strive for is consistency.
We would suggest that this may be an issue that is on the way out. The airwaves where most people live are crammed pretty full. That suggests the likelihood that the clever and talented broadcast engineering community may have already exploited most of the opportunities for brilliant acrobatic move-ins – although nothing ever surprises us any longer.
