Should the FCC Update Its FM Digital Multicast Power Formula?

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DELRAY BEACH, FLA. — Tune to 101.5 MHz, and you’ll enjoy the Christmas-flavored adult pop music that’s supplanted the Hot Adult Contemporary programming on “101.5 Lite FM,” Audacy Corp.-owned WLYF-FM in Miami. The station, a 100kw Class C1 FM, uses a tower in the Miami Gardens antenna farm some 35 miles to the south. Its HD1 signal is city-grade here, and enjoys coverage from Lake Worth south to the tip of Key Largo.


At 101.5 HD2 is “Today’s Life,” an automated Soft Adult Contemporary presentation with commercial free music that pays homage to the WLYF of the 1990s. But, good luck maintaining that HD2 signal across the same listening area as HD1 “Lite FM.”

That inequity is thanks to a formula used to determine FM sideband power levels for stations transmitting digital FM. It varies, widely, as seen by RBR+TVBR in both South Florida and recently in Westchester County, N.Y.

Now, the Media Bureau is seeking comment on a Petition for Rulemaking that would modernize this formula, and its a desire being pushed by the parent company of HD Radio and the NAB.

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