Public notice spells out showings that must accompany applicants’ choices of which 2003-era FM translator applications will stay and which will go

If you’re one of the lucky folks who happens to have translator applications still pending at the Commission from the famous 2003 filing window, heads up – depending on how many applications you have and what markets they propose to serve, you could have a lot of homework to do between now and January 25. That’s because the Media Bureau has announced that the window period for submitting “translator application selection” lists (“Selection Lists”) and related “Caps Showings” will run from January 10-25, 2013. 

So much for taking any time off during the Christmas/New Year’s/MLK extended holiday season.

The Bureau’s public notice is not unanticipated. As we noted just ten days ago, the Commission is highly motivated to wrap up the long-running face-off between FM translator applicants and would-be LPFM applicants. The culling of the herd of translator applications that have been sitting around for nearly ten years is an essential step in achieving that goal.

As those of you who have been following the LPFM/FM translator imbroglio through our blog already know, the Commission has devised a highly complex set of technical guidelines to govern which translator applications will be processed and which will be dismissed. The applicants themselves will have the first say, but their ability to pick and choose among their pending applications is subject to the Commission’s complex guidelines.

In announcing the deadline for submitting the Selection Lists, the Bureau has provided a useful summary of the technical factors that will come into play as applicants prepare their lists. We won’t try to summarize those factors here – the Bureau has already done an admirable job on that front, so we’ll simply provide another link to the Bureau’s public notice.

We will, however, note that the January 25, 2013 deadline appears to be absolute. In bold face text the Bureau warns that “Selection Lists and Caps Showings may not be submitted, amended, corrected or resubmitted for further consideration after the Caps Deadline.” So if you’re going to be among those filing lists and showings during the upcoming window, be sure to double- and triple-check your work before turning it in.

And just who will be having to submit Selection Lists and Cap Showings? According to the notice, “[n]o submission is required for this filing window by any Auction 83 [FM translator] applicant that has fewer than 51 pending Applications nationally and no more than one pending Application in any of the Appendix A Markets.” The term “Appendix A Markets” refers to a list of markets set out in Appendix A to the Commission’s Fourth Report and Order. (We described that Report and Order last April.) So you’re off the hook if you have no more than 50 pending translator applications and no more than one application in any Appendix A Market.

The rest of you should get busy.

You’re going to have to decide which applications you want to continue to prosecute and which you’re willing to toss. No applicant will be permitted to keep more than 70 applications on file, so some of you will have to do some whacking just to get in under that limit. 

And once you’ve made that cut, the fun will have just started. 

Applicants that plan to prosecute 51-70 applications nationally will have to demonstrate, with respect to any of its applications outside any Appendix A Market, compliance with a number of “national caps conditions”. That demonstration will include a “No Overlap Showing” and a showing that “at least one [LPFM] licensing opportunity will remain at the proposed site if the Application is granted.” In the “No Overlap Showing” the applicant will have to show that the proposed 60 dBu contour of the particular translator application won’t overlap with the equivalent contour of any other translator application or authorization held by the applicant as of December 4, 2012. (All contours will be determined by the standard prediction method.)

The Bureau’s notice also points out that the grant of any application with a transmitter site outside of an Appendix A Market will be subject to a condition that, for the first four years of operation, the translator’s 60 dBu contour must overlap the 60 dBu contour as originally granted. In other words, for the first four years a non-Appendix A Market translator won’t be able to be relocated so far away that its modified 60 dBu contour does not overlap the originally granted 60 dBu contour. (Again, all contours will be determined by the standard prediction method.)

For Appendix A Market applications, there may be even more to be done. Applicants wishing to prosecute more than one translator application in a given Appendix A Market will be subject to a number of restrictions. First, an applicant may prosecute no more than three applications in any Appendix A Market. For each such application, a “No Overlap Showing” will have to be submitted. And in addition, for each of those applications the applicant will have to demonstrate that certain LPFM licensing opportunities will not be precluded.

And all of this has to be wrapped up and delivered to the FCC by 7:00 p.m. (ET) on January 25, 2013. All showings will be submitted on paper – there will be no electronic filing.

As noted, once an applicant has filed its Selection List and accompanying Caps Showings, there’s no changing them at all. The Bureau will then sift through them and clear its files accordingly. If an applicant that should file a Selection List and Caps Showing fails to, or if it files a “deficient” showing, the Commission will follow a particular drill for deciding which applications will stay and which will go.

Finally, a note of caution to everybody who has a vintage 2003 translator application still pending. You all are still subject to the anti-collusion rules. That means that you cannot, at any point in the caps selection process, communicate with other applicants with respect to various application-related matters. (The particular areas to avoid are spelled out in Section 1.2105(c) of the rules.)