This summer, we wrote about the LPFM operator in southern Georgia that believed it was entitled to raise its power after observing its signal get clobbered by interference from E-Skip and tropospheric ducting.
The Valdosta Alliance, licensee of 89.7 WFAG(LP) in Valdosta, Ga., filed a waiver to the Federal Communications Commission on Aug. 3. The maximum effective radiated power LPFMs are allowed is 100 watts. Valdosta wants to run 250 watts.
The commission denied that waiver on Oct. 1. It stated that the alliance failed to demonstrate any special circumstances for a waiver and that such an individualized request is not the proper channel for what would effectively serve as a rule change for the entire service.
Now, in a petition filed Oct. 12, the Valdosta Alliance is asking the Audio Division to reconsider that denial, arguing that 100 watts just isn’t enough to stay viable due to interference from nearby stations across the Georgia Sawgrass region and adjacent areas of Florida.
Particulars
The very subject of raising the LPFM transmitting power limits is not new. Respected voices in the industry, such as Michi Bradley at REC Networks, have presented petitions for rulemaking on the subject of raising the limit to 250 watts.
But that’s only part of the alliance’s argument.
Headed by Paula Greer, Valdosta followed up with a petition for reconsideration on Oct. 12. Greer argued that the station had already been displaced from its original 103.7 dial position due to co-channel interference and that an “insignificant” 100-watt signal cannot adequately support the local community.
“250 watts power is necessary to strengthen the signal to protect our primary contour,” Greer argued.
But as Radio World reported in August, Greer also previously stated that the “grotesque and malicious” interference the station receives stems from a wide-ranging conspiracy, accusing the FCC of serving the whims of the National Association of Broadcasters as an “enemy” of LPFMs.
It’s not unusual to find voices in the low-power community being critical of the commission or of NAB. But the Valdosta filings are unusual for their dramatic, almost imaginative conspiracy theories, as you can read here. The group has also come under criticism online for errors in the filing such as referring to the NAB as the NBA throughout.
“The big question now is, does the FCC really stand or work for the public interest?” Greer wrote.
Safety valve
Addressing nearby allocations on 89.7, the alliance believes that a 250-watt signal would not cause prohibited overlap. It argued that its proposed 40 dBu interfering contour would not overlap the 60 dBu protected contour of any co-channel station, nor would its 54 dBu contour touch a first-adjacent 60 dBu contour, or its 100 dBu contour touch a second-adjacent 60 dBu contour.
The petition pointed to a post-Hurricane Katrina precedent, when the commission granted an emergency waiver allowing WQRZ(LP) in Bay St. Louis, Miss., to operate with 1,000 watts ERP. But that’s the only time that the commission has allowed an LPFM to operate with more than 100 watts since the service was conceived.
And while Valdosta argued that its waiver should serve as a catalyst for a rule change that serves to benefit other LPFM operators, the Audio Division reminded the alliance that waivers are intended as individualized “safety valves” rather than rulemaking substitutes.
“It would be inappropriate to make such a policy decision potentially affecting many LPFM stations in the context of an individual waiver request in a licensing proceeding,” the Audio Division wrote.
In rejecting Valdosta’s waiver, the commission emphasized that it has made clear since the inception of the service that LPFM stations are secondary and “will not be protected” against interference from full-service facility modifications, upgrades or new FM stations.
The FCC also rejected Valdosta’s contour-protection arguments, stating that granting a waiver based on contour overlap rather than required distance separations would set a damaging precedent, creating “widely applicable exceptions” to standard LPFM minimum-distance spacing rules.
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