NARBA

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Thu, 4 Jun 2009 21:57:14 -0400, "Dave Doherty" <dave@skywaves.net> said:

> Once we abrogated NARBA,

Correction: NARBA wasn't abrogated (at least not by the United
States), it was superseded by later agreements among the parties.
The /Encyclopedia of the United Nations and international
agreements/, 2003 edition, says:

	North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, signed on 13
	December 1937 in Havana, and ratified by Bahamas, Canada,
	Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and the United
	States.  It went into force on 29 March 1940 but was revised
	in 1946 and then replaced by another North American Regional
	Broadcasting Agreement, which was signed on 15 November 1950
	in Washington, DC.

They don't mention the Rio agreement.  /United States Treaties in
Force/ does mention Rio, and does not mention NARBA, although not all
of the NARBA signatories have signed on to Rio (official title,
"Regional agreement for the medium frequency broadcasting service in
Region 2, with annexes and final protocol").  The parties to the Rio
agreement are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, the
Netherlands, Suriname, and the U.S.  There are additionally bilateral
protocols for frequency coordination between the U.S. and both Canada
and Mexico.  The Bahamas is said to be one country for which the NARBA
is still in force (even though the State Department doesn't appear to
agree), as they did not sign up to any successor agreement.  (There is
a later bilateral agreement with the Bahamas specifically on PSRAs.)

The Canadian agreement for AM dates to 1984; the TV agreement is from
1994, and the FM agreement is from 1947.  (I believe that there is a
more recent "working arrangement" for FM which does not have the legal
status under international law of a treaty.)

-GAWollman