Here’s another big city where listeners will be hearing more low-power FM signals soon.
Two organizations will timeshare 101.1 MHz in the Seattle area, settling a mutually exclusive group that originally had seven hopeful applicants.
The FCC has granted Sand Point Arts & Cultural Exchange, in the Magnuson Park area, and the KMIH.org Radio Booster Club separate construction permits after the two filed an agreement.
The arts and culture group will air its programming from noon to midnight, while the booster club will take midnight to noon. They plan separate studios, according to paperwork filed with the commission.
The booster club exists to advise and support Mercer Island High School station KMIH(FM); it also operates a translator in the market that airs KMIH. The club stated that upon grant of an LPFM, it planned either to divest the translator or use it to rebroadcast its new station.
Sand Point Arts & Cultural Exchange meantime plans a mix of content such as naptime stories, oral histories, public affairs call-ins and broadcast training for Waldorf High School students. The group supports “imaginative use” of urban park lands, public open spaces and surplus public property. It operates from Warren G. Magnuson Park on a peninsula to the northeast of downtown Seattle, on the shore of Lake Washington.
Jockeying among the original seven applicants for that LPFM opportunity in Seattle also produced a 101.1 construction permit for the City of Kent, Wash., nearby.
The original applicant group also included the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council (its application since dismissed); Sustainable Bainbridge (dismissed); the Ukrainian Church of Evangelical Faith (granted a CP after changing frequency to 100.3); and Iglesia Sanando Las Heridas farther to the southeast of Seattle. The latter group modified its application at 101.1 in order to help resolve the MX grouping and was still awaiting its outcome as of Friday afternoon.
According to the FCC database, there are approximately 1,326 low-power FM construction permits outstanding, and 858 LPFMs on the air. Both numbers will continue to grow as more mutually exclusive groupings from the recent application window are resolved.
This story includes information from the FCC database as well as the website of consultancy REC Networks.
Here are the predicted footprints of the LPFM signals at 101.1:
