Pai Changes AM-Revitalization Request To Match Clyburn Position
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai changed his request to amend the AM Revitalization draft order to include an AM-only translator application window in 2017, he said in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters' President's Council Wednesday. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said last week that she supports the current draft order -- which doesn’t contain an AM-only translator window -- but endorsed the idea of opening a window after the TV incentive auction. By changing his stance to align with hers, Pai is trying get Clyburn to vote with him over Chairman Tom Wheeler, who's seen as being against the translator window, broadcast attorneys told us.
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Wheeler has been exerting pressure on the Democratic commissioners not to vote with Pai on the AM revitalization, a Pai spokesman told us. “If Commissioners are not willing to vote in accordance with their publicly stated position on an issue, then there is nothing more to be done,” Pai told the NRB. “It will be obvious that something else is driving the FCC’s decision -- something entirely unrelated to AM radio.” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly supports Pai’s proposal, an FCC official told us, but it would take three commissioners to push through a change to the draft order. Clyburn’s office didn’t comment.
Supporting a window after the incentive auction isn't Pai’s “first choice,” he said. The Wireless Bureau’s auction staff is fully tied up by the incentive auction, making it impossible to hold an AM-only FM translator application window because it would include auctions when two stations apply for mutually exclusive translators, Media Bureau Audio Division Chief Peter Doyle said at the Radio Show last week. That explanation is “strange” because it differs from Wheeler’s condemnation of the translator window as a spectrum giveaway, Pai said. “Taken together, these arguments don’t appear to reflect principled opposition to holding an FM translator window.”
Under the current draft order, there would be no translator window, and applications for a waiver to relocate an FM translator would be staggered in two windows, an FCC official told us. C and D class AM station owners would be able to apply to relocate a translator between January and July, followed by a three-month window for all AM stations, the FCC official told us.
Nonmutually exclusive applications for FM translators -- which don’t require auctions -- could be processed on their own, while those that require auctions could be held after the incentive auction, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Frank Jazzo in an interview Wednesday. Auctions have yet to be held among those who applied during the 2003 FM translator window, he said, but most broadcasters would welcome Pai’s proposal: “Half a loaf is better than none.”
The delay of the 2003 FM translator auction is one reason many broadcasters welcome the emphasis in the draft order on a waiver to allow translator relocations within 250 miles, said Womble Carlyle radio attorney John Garziglia. The waiver proposal provides more “business certainty” for broadcasters, since applications to move a translator could be granted after less than two months, while the wait for auctions can be years. “Many broadcasters see a significant opportunity in the waiver,” Garziglia said. Since the draft order already has the chairman’s and Clyburn’s support, Garziglia said it would be best for broadcasters to support it, because its approval will begin the revitalization process. If Wheeler isn’t willing to “go along” with a revamped draft order that includes the translator window, broadcasters could be left with “nothing at all,” Garziglia said.