First FCC NCE FM Window Since 2007 Stirs Interest

The FCC’s first window for full-power FM noncommercial educational station construction permit applications since 2007 opens Tuesday, and anecdotal evidence suggests high interest. Three people involved with assisting with NCE applications told us they are turning away would-be applicants. Broadcast attorney Dan Alpert said 1,500 to 2,000 applications are expected. Each entity has a 10-application limit.

“It’s pent-up demand,” said Foster Garvey's Melodie Virtue. The NCE window closes Nov. 9.

To preserve integrity, specifics of who applied for what won’t be public until the filing opportunity ends, a contrast to the way other FCC auctions are often run, said a public notice. Afterward, the agency is expected to announce singleton winners within weeks, and mutually exclusive (MX) applications weeks after that. Applicants can gauge how they fared immediately after bidding ends by using public data.

The window will be the first to be run through the FCC’s licensing and management system (LMS) rather than the consolidated database system (CDBS). “It’s the one wild card in this thing,” said Alpert. “We don’t know how the LMS is gonna behave,” said founder Michelle Bradley of REC Networks. In the 2013 low-power FM window, the load of applications caused difficulties for CDBS, leading to the window being extended, attorneys said. Instructions on using LMS for the window are here.

"When the NCE window opens, we encourage applicants to pay close attention to the filing requirements," an FCC spokesperson emailed Friday. "This includes abiding by the 10 application limit per entity, and filing within the announced filing window, as early and late-filed applications will not be accepted." Once the window closes, the Media Bureau "will move as expeditiously as possible to announce singletons and MX groups," the spokesperson said.

The new NCE stations created from the process are expected to overwhelmingly be in rural areas. Applicants can propose building stations only where they won’t interfere with other full powers, in a narrow range of channels, and “the availability just isn’t there in the big cities,” Bradley said. Space is tight, and some secondary service stations -- such as LPFMs -- could be displaced, Virtue said.

Many applicants are expected to be existing radio entities. Virtue reported 20-plus as in the pipeline, nearly all already running radio stations. Bradley expects much interest from religious broadcasters, many of whom can afford to construct larger, more powerful facilities. Since the process favors applicants providing new NCE radio service to markets lacking it, a far-reaching signal is an advantage, Bradley said.

The apparent interest here contrasts with the auction of commercial construction permits in August, in which no AM stations were successfully sold (see 2108190030). Since many noncommercial stations -- especially religious ones -- are primarily donation-focused, they haven’t been as affected by COVID-19 pandemic shifts in advertising, said Virtue.

Far-reaching stations and many applicants could mean a drawn-out MX groups process, said Virtue. The FCC will assign MX applications into groups made up of “daisy-chains” of all connected interfering applications. Two individual applications might not interfere with each other, but if they both individually interfere with a third, all three stations end up in the same MX group, attorneys said. A request for a powerful station can sweep dozens of other applicants into its MX group, and only one permit will be assigned out of a given group, said Virtue. Applicants can reach settlements to break out of such groups, in a sometimes lengthy process, said Bradley.

This window is “long overdue,” Virtue said. Attorneys believe the long stretch between filing periods is partly due to Media Bureau workload. “They always have a lot going on,” said Alpert. There’s demand for an LPFM opportunity and more FM translator windows after the NCE one, he said: “It’s not like they’re sitting on their hands.”