WNSH/WPEP

[Scott Fybush]

>WPEP's GM has stated (for whatever it's worth) that WPEP will not go dark
>but will move to a new frequency.

WPEP's GM is saying what he's got to say to keep a good face on things and 
keep whatever advertisers the station has buying time until the bitter end. 
I know several WPEP staffers were trying to fight the closure, but most of 
them have now left the station. And it's ultimately in the hands of whoever 
owns the license - and the licensee has indicated to the FCC that he's 
willing to give up the license, so that's the end of the story.

>The only frequencies that MIGHT be open
>are in ex-band. Not far from Taunton are two ex-band allocations that were
>never built. (No CPs were ever granted, AFAIK.) I'm referring to the
>application of what was then WTRY 980 in Troy NY to move to--was it 1690?
>and the application of what was then--I think--WWNH 930 in Rochester NH to
>move to 1700. Although either of these allocations could probably be moved
>to Taunton without causing much more or less interference than it would have
>caused in its original location, does either one work given the very strict
>spacing requirements the FCC has established for ex-band?

WTRY was assigned 1640, if memory serves. I'm pretty sure, in any event, 
that the only X-band channels that DON'T work for spacing in Taunton are 
1660, 1680 and possibly 1690.

But the question is purely academic - there's absolutely no precedent for a 
daytimer that's not the only service to its community getting an X-band 
allocation. Legally, Taunton will continue to be served by WSNE after WPEP 
goes dark, and for the FCC to begin examining the question of whether WSNE 
is "really" a Taunton station opens up a very messy can of worms that I'm 
pretty sure the Commission has no interest in addressing.

There are a lot of signal-impaired AMs out there that would dearly love to 
move to the X-band. WRCR 1300 Spring Valley NY, a class D station with 500 
watts day and lightbulb power at night, has said that they're interested in 
going to 1700, where they would better serve Rockland County at night. 
Their claim is that WRCR is the only English-language station in Rockland 
and thus deserves a full-time signal. But again, the FCC does NOT want to 
get involved in programming issues, and WRKL 910 New City is also in 
Rockland with a full-time signal, albeit in Polish.

Point is, *if* WPEP applied for the X-band (even though no window for 
X-band applications has been announced), the FCC would have plenty of 
reasons to reject it and no very good ones for granting the application, 
knowing it would touch off a flood of apps from other AMs trying to expand 
lousy signals.

>Beverly is closer to Rochester NH than Taunton is. Hmmm. If indeed the FCC
>were willing to move the Rochester NH allocation, would Keating have done
>better by letting WPEP stay put on 1570 and moving WNSH to 1700? With 10
>kW-ND-D and a clear salt-water shot from Endicott College to Boston, WNSH
>could have served a lot of the City of Boston during daylight hours. Maybe
>the idea is to get 1700 allocated to Taunton and THEN apply for a
>Taunton/Beverly frequency swap. Ya think?

Overly speculative. I think Keating just wants more power on 1570, and the 
loss of WPEP in the process is, unfortunately, incidental.

>If it weren't for an application filed during the AM filing window for 1580
>in Cordaville MA (really a neighborhood in Framingham), WPEP might be able
>to move to 1580--although such a move would probably not work with WARV. I
>doubt whether Cordaville will be granted, much less built, because
>Cordaville doesn't fulfill the requirements for an independent community and
>Framingham already has two full-time commercial stations: WKOX and WROR
>(plus the non-comm at Framingham State). Still, I don't believe that the FCC
>has yet denied the Cordaville app.

There's no FCC policy that permits only one commercial station in a 
community, nor even any preference for first AM service to a commiunity, 
and in any event there are no strict city-of-license definitions for AM the 
way there are for FM allocations. IF the Cordaville app is otherwise 
grantable (and I haven't looked closely enough at it to say one way or 
another), it will work its way through the application process accordingly. 
I don't recall whether there were other mutually-exclusive filings on or 
near 1580.