Re: Expanded expanded band station

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Dan Strassberg wrote:
>So far, two ex-band stations, of which WWRU is one, have
>been granted 10 kW-D/9 kW-N DA-N. The other one is in
>CA, but I don't recall which station it is. I gather
>that there is some legal "magic" associated with 9 kW
>(otherwise, why wouldn't it be 10 kW?). Maybe the Rio
>treaty signatories accept that 9 is simply a large value
>of 1 whereas 10 is not :-)


        I wonder whether there is something going with the FCC involving
these nighttime power increases on the expanded band where the patterns are
set up so no more than the equivalent of the original 1 kW nights is
radiated toward c o-channel and adjacent channel stations?

>In fact there _are_ precedents in broadcast regulation
>for such bizarre logic. NARBA specified that Class I-A
>stations had to operate with 50 kW-U. In fact, though,
>Mexico allowed most of its I-As to run 150 kW-U and
>several ran even higher power. Mexico simply interpreted
>the treaty language to mean _at least_ 50 kW. Maybe when
>you translate the English "shall be" into Spanish, it
>comes out "shall be at least."

        My reading of the original 1941 treaty (actually negotiated in
1938, if I recall) is that it does say "at least 50 kW" for the Class I-A
stations. In fact, I've always thought of the frequent comments about
Mexico operating stations at higher power  "despite the treaty" as a sort
of urban legend. Canada and the U.S. decided to limit their I-A stations to
50 kW--the minimum they could use under the treaty. Mexico did otherwise.
Also, long after the treaty was signed, the I-A stations in the U.S. kept
lobbying the FCC for more power. The treaty was not a problem.

        The treaty actually had a use-it-or-lose-it provision about the I-A
channels being made available for renegotiation and reassignment to some
other country if a country with the assignment did not use it. No other
class of assignments had this provision. IMO, that approach goes along with
50 kW as a minimum. I think the treaty was based on the idea of encouraging
the use of these channels to their maximum, and since one station had
exclusive use of each one, more than 50 kW would make sense.

        I believe (although on this I'm not certain; can't find my file
right now) that for the I-B assignments, the treaty said the maximum was
100 kW day, 50 kW night, with the 10 kW minimum at all times.  So that
would be another place in the treaty with more than 50 kW on clear channels
part of the day and I believe Mexico also had or still has a few stations
that operate that way.

        Before the treaty, Mexico already had at least several stations
operating at powers of more than 50 kW full-time. Maybe Mexico was the one
pushing for the higher power. Of course, the U.S. had one such station,
WLW, when the treaty was being negotiated. I think you see a bit of the
history of the countries, their politics and geography, in the radio
history here. Mexico had a very centralized system of radio controlled by a
strong central government in what amounted to a one-party system. It has a
vast rural area that is thinly populated and the government, IMO, must have
wanted to be able to reach almost everywhere with a few high-power
stations.

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