Landless Tribes Get Radio Assist Under New FCC Order Limiting Move-Ins
Tribes without ancestral lands will now receive the FCC’s assistance in getting AM and FM stations, under an order approved 5-0 at Thursday’s meeting (CD March 3 p9). Also under the order, radio move-ins from rural to urban areas will become harder, as had been expected (CD Feb 22 p6). New procedures will apply to the pending applications to amend the FM allotments, AM allotments and non-final FM allotment orders, a commission official said. The upshot of the order is that many of the 96 pending applications for radio stations to move from rural to more urban areas may not be approved, industry and agency officials said.
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Commissioner Robert McDowell said he has “concerns” about the order and how the decision “may affect the long-term financial viability of some stations.” McDowell said the “rule changes establish only rebuttable presumptions, not blanket bans, concerning the location of stations” and said he will be “watching with interest to see how reasonably flexible the revised approach turns out to be."
McDowell said he was “pleased” with the grandfathering of the currently pending radio applications for new facilities under the old prioritization standard, but said he would have “gone further to extend the same treatment to all applications on file,” as of Thursday. There were 96 pending move-in applications on Thursday afternoon, 78 of those for FM stations (http://xrl.us/bii7mt) and the rest for AM (http://xrl.us/bii7mx).
Through a waiver process, the new order is an “attempt to do something,” for unlanded tribes seeking radio stations, broadcast lawyer John Crigler said. Under the previous standard, rural radio stations must serve 50 percent of a federally recognized tribal land, leaving out about 253 tribes that don’t own land, he said.