The FM translator application juggernaut rolls on.
Having processed the Selections Lists and Caps Showings filed in January and having, as a result, tossed several thousand applications earlier this month, the Media Bureau has sifted through the remaining rubble and identified 713 singleton applications that may be grantable in relatively short order. The lucky 713 applications: (a) are apparently not mutually exclusive with any other applications filed back in the 2003 filing window and (b) don’t run afoul of the technical limitations imposed in last year’s Fourth Report and Order. (Helpful reminder: To satisfy those limitations, an application must be: (1) outside all Spectrum Limited markets and (2) not within 39 km of any Spectrum Limited market grid.)
Heads up, though. If you’re on the singleton list, you’ve only got until March 28, 2013 to prepare and file your long-form application (Form 349), along with any required filing fee and Form 159, in order to stay in the game.
The public notice announcing the singleton list also includes some guidelines relative to what you can and can’t do in the long-form application. Attention should be paid to those details, because a failure to comply could result in dismissal. It would be a shame to have come this far in the application process only to crater on a technicality at the ultimate (or maybe penultimate) stage of that process.
In particular, the long-form application may specify facilities (including, e.g., transmitter site, power, height, directional pattern, channel) different from those specified in the original 2003 “tech box” showing as long as they constitute “minor” changes. If the proposed changes would result in a site (a) within the 39 km buffer of any defined Market Grid and/or (b) at an out-of-grid location within a Top-50 Spectrum Limited Market, the applicant will also have to file a preclusion showing relative to the amended proposal. (If the facilities specified in the long-form Form 349 application are identical to those specified in the “tech box” filed back in 2003, no preclusion study is necessary.)
Along with the public notice announcing the singleton list, the Bureau has also released a separate set of guidelines describing in considerable detail the required preclusion showing. Again, attention should be paid to the details, since the Bureau has made clear that preclusion studies must be complete and sufficient and, most importantly, they may not be “amended, corrected, completed or resubmitted” after March 28.
Once the March 28 deadline has come and gone, the Bureau will review the amendments, dismiss any applications that fail to satisfy the terms set out in the public notice, and the rest will be put out on a public notice which will trigger a 15-day petition to deny period. Of course, any of the 713 applicants who fail to file a Form 349 by the deadline will also be dismissed.
