Broadcast Associations, Full Power Licensees, Engineers Pan LPFM-AG Petition

The proposals in the Low Power FM Advocacy Group's petition (see 1508180070) amount to creating a whole new FM service, said numerous state broadcast associations and full-power FM licensees in comments posted Wednesday in RM-11753. The FCC “should be reluctant to consider replacement of that LPFM service with the entirely different service that LPFM-AG proposes in its Petition,” said a group of state broadcast associations. LPFM-AG hasn't shown “a legally adequate basis for activating the Commission’s rulemaking processes to implement a wholesale redesign of the LPFM service,” the groups said. The petition would convert LPFM into “commercial FM lite,” said a group of full-power FM licensees. “In calling for co-primary status between low power and full power FM stations, the proposals run counter to unambiguous federal law,” the full-power licensees said. “The Petition is not so much a request to alter the existing rules but to establish an entirely new service divorced from the principles, protections and understandings that undergird LPFM,” said the North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia broadcaster associations in a joint filing. The LPFM-AG proposal is “fraught” with potential interference situations, said broadcast engineering firm Cohen Dippell.