We wrote last week about the FCC’s determination of which applicants are to be preferred in several groups of mutually exclusive applications for new Low Power FM stations.  We warned full-power FM broadcasters to review the preferred applicants as broadcasters have 30 days from last week’s public notice to file petitions to deny against such LPFM applications citing interference concerns or other issues with those applications.  Now, a number of additional LPFM applications have been found by the FCC to be ready for grant, and broadcasters need to review these applications – and be prepared to review a steady stream of these applications, all with different petition to deny deadlines, over the next few months.  Where did these applications come from?

 In the rules for the LPFM window, the FCC decided that once it made determinations about tentative winners in mutually exclusive groups of applications, all LPFM applicants not selected (or those in ties) could file amendments to their applications seeking new channels – including major changes specifying brand new channels at different sites having no relation to the original application but for meeting the general requirements that the controlling parties in these applicants be local to the service area that they propose to serve.  As these amendments are processed on a first-come, first-serve basis, many LPFM applicants were apparently ready to go with amendments as soon as the list of tentative winners was released.  And these amendments have started to come out on public notices, announcing 30 day petition to deny deadlines (see, for instance, this list of Broadcast Applications released yesterday by the FCC, at pages 8-11).
Continue Reading More LPFM Applications for Broadcasters to Review to Assess Potential Interference Issues, and New Petition to Deny Deadlines