Licensed to non-actual locations

[Dave Doherty]

There's a lot of case law about New England towns because the legal 
organizations of communities are so different here than in the bulk of the 
country. I think it is likely that every square inch of New England belongs 
to some "town" or other. That is patently not true in other areas of the 
country, particularly the West.

CDPs were meant to add substance to concentrations of population that were 
not incorporated in the traditional sense. They are accepted by the FCC as 
licensable communities without any further documentation. If the community 
is not a CDP and is not incorporated, then there are qualifications hoops to 
jump through - local governance, local school district, local police force, 
band existence of local businesses all help to establish a place as a 
licensable community.

The peak of Mt. Washington is in Sargents, but the slopes include Crawfords 
(where the base station is located), Beans, Chandler, Thomson and Meserves, 
Cutts, and arguably several others. I doubt anybody actually lives in any of 
these "towns," and not one is included in the census places table. I am 
totally guessing here, but I suspect that these "towns" represent the 
original landholdings granted by the King or the territorial Governor way 
back when.

So, could you license WHOM today to "Mount Washington?" Probably not. Gorham 
would a piece of cake, though.

Tuck showings are intended primarily to establish that a community is not a 
made-up entity within a larger community. It works mostly to prevent 
wholesale moves of stations from small communities to large metros. When you 
move a station to a new community, you can't propose to serve more than a 
particular percentage of any recognized urbanized area. As an example, you 
could not propose to move a station from, say, Provincetown to Norwood, if 
the station would serve more than half the Boston urbanized area.

-d



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org>
To: <paul@derrynh.net>
Cc: <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 9:33 AM
Subject: RE: Licensed to non-actual locations


> <<On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:20:49 -0500, "Paul Hopfgarten" <paul@derrynh.net> 
> said:
>
>> If you think about it, WHOM is also currently licensed to a 
>> "non-political"
>> subdivision.
>
>> Mt. Washington is NOT actually a political subdivision in New Hampshire 
>> (I
>> want to say it's Sargent's Purchase...which even at that, is still
>> unincorporated).
>
>> I guess "common knowledge" of a location is sufficient for the FCC...
>
> The FCC generally prefers incorporated municipalities, and if pressed
> will accept a "Census-defined place" (particularly in southern states
> where municipalities ae in short supply).  They don't believe our
> towns really exist, because the Census Bureau conflates them with
> midwestern townships.
>
> For allocations purposes today, there is something called "/Tuck/
> analysis" which is supposed to demonstrate that the proposed community
> is a real community.  The commission was much more lax in the days of
> yore when they could hardly give away FM licenses.
>
> -GAWollman
>
>