GIN, GIP, etc

[Scott Fybush]

At 07:55 PM 2/19/2004 -0500, Garrett Wollman wrote:
><<On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 19:30:59 -0500 (GMT-05:00), hopfgapr@sprynet.com said:
>
> > Can someone else apply for that freq at some point if 930 chooses
> > not to exercise its option?  -Paul Hopfgarten
>
>I don't know that there's any precedent.  It would require a "major
>change window", which has either happened or been announced recently,
>I forget which.  I don't know if the law specifies an expiration date
>for the original reservations or not.  It ought to be possible, given
>some of the other ex-band precedents, to apply for a new ex-band
>station on any non-interfering frequency in that location -- if there
>were actually anyone interested in a new AM station at the high end of
>the dial in a region with awful ground conductivity and strong NIMBYs.
>
>Paging professor Fybush!

Right here, Dr. Wollman! (Oh, wait, we won't be able to joke about that 
when we have the REAL Dr. Halper, will we?)

The major change window was open Jan. 26-30 and reportedly produced some 
1300 valid applications. BUT...it was specifically limited to 540-1600 and 
did not include the X-band.

At the moment, there is no mechanism for applying for a new X-band signal 
by anyone other than:

1) The stations (like WGIN - or is it WGIP? I always forget which is 
which...) that were on the original list of applicants and were granted 
reservations on the X-band. The idea with that original window was to 
reduce nighttime interference on the 540-1600 spectrum as much as possible, 
which had the semi-paradoxical result that the bigger your original signal, 
the more likely you were to be granted an X-band slot. But of course, those 
huge signals (940 in Fresno, for instance) are the ones least likely to 
really want to move to the X-band. I don't know why some of them applied in 
the first place...maybe they thought there'd be a rules change allowing 
them to stay on both frequencies.

2) Anyone meeting the "Elizabeth qualifications" - an AM daytimer that's 
the only licensed service to a community with 100,000 or more people. It is 
believed that the three stations so qualified - WJDM in Elizabeth NJ, for 
whom the rule was created, KDIA Vallejo CA and 540 Costa Mesa CA - have 
already gotten their X-banders, which are not covered by the five-year 
sunset rule. (540 Costa Mesa has nonetheless gone dark; the X-bander it 
spawned on 1650 was worth much more than the 540 ever would have been, anyway.)

s