AM station WMVP in Chicago will be allowed to move from its longtime tower site and operate with lower nighttime power.
The FCC has approved its application over an objection that raised concerns about a deterioration of skywave service.
In August, station owner Good Karma Broadcasting filed an application to move 50 kW WMVP, which broadcasts a sports format on 1000 kHz and is the home of the Chicago Bears and White Sox.
It plans to move from its three-tower site in Downers Grove, Ill., to the nighttime transmitter site of 820 WCPT(AM). The latter station is licensed to Willow Springs while its tower site is in Joliet, about 19 miles to the south.
Along with the move to Joliet, Good Karma applied to downgrade WMVP’s nighttime power from 50 kW to 37 kW while diplexing from WCPT’s facility. According to earlier reporting by the website RadioInsight, the move is a consequence of the sale of the station by ESPN to Good Karma. The transmitter property was not part of that sale.
But Albert Adam David filed an informal objection in November. He argued that as a “clear-channel” Class A AM facility, WMVP’s power downgrade would not meet neither the secondary service its status is designed to protect nor the power requirements of its class designation.
David told the FCC that areas of the Appalachian Mountain region in Virginia and West Virginia would suffer from the power reduction and what he called a “significant” null in skywave propagation.
He said that if the FCC allowed the move, it should reclassify WMVP as a Class B so that other stations on 1000 AM could add or increase nighttime coverage. Class A stations are given protection within a 750-mile radius of their transmitter site.
Good Karma, in response, noted that two other Class A AMs operate with less than 50 kW nighttime power and argued that its application fulfills all technical requirements.
The commission now has denied David’s argument.
The Media Bureau wrote that while 50 kW is “a power level best suited for stations intended to provide wide-area service in the most efficient manner,” WMVP is a former Class I-B AM station, which existed as a class, along with Class I-A and Class I-N stations, before being reformed into a single Class A category by the FCC in 1991.
Former Class I-B stations, which were long authorized to operate at less than 50 kW, were encouraged to continue to or apply to run at a lower power, “provided that the proposed power level was sufficient to generate a secondary service contour,” it noted.
The bureau said that grandfathered Class I-B stations running at lower nighttime power had already been considered in its rulemaking process dating back to the 1991 class merger and that most Class A stations still run 50 kW at night.
As a result, Good Karma has been given the green light to relocate WMVP’s broadcast facility and the objection from David was denied.
Craig Karmazin founded Good Karma Brands in 1997 with the purchase of three radio stations in Wisconsin. WMVP is formatted as “ESPN 1000, Chicago’s Home for Sports.”
(Read about the rich history of broadcasts on 1000 kHz in Chicago.)
