As drive toward an LPFM auction moves forward, applications get tossed for real while Selection Lists/Caps Showings get released, sort of.

That loud flushing noise you may just have heard was the sound of about 3,000 FM translator applications heading down the tubes. Having analyzed the various Selection Lists and Caps Showings submitted by translator applicants late last month, the Media Bureau has announced that it has now tossed “approximately 3,000” vintage 2003 translator applications. In the same public notice, the Bureau has also announced the “release” – and we use that term loosely – of all of the underlying Selection Lists and Caps Showings submitted during the recently closed Selection Filing Window.

Which applications got thrown out and which didn’t? Good question. The Bureau’s one and only (apparently) public notice on the subject doesn’t include a list of the dismissed applicants, or applications, or file numbers, or any of the other conventional data you might expect. If you want to know any specifics, the staff apparently expects you to head online to CDBS, where you can probably figure out precisely which applications got dismissed and which continue to live on if you’ve got boatloads of (a) time and (b) motivation and (c) luck.

According to the public notice, each of the translator applications dismissed today “will include the following CDBS Public Notice comment: ‘Dismissed February 5, 2013 per DA 13-XX.’” A quick random spot check of FM translator applications dismissed today did not turn up any such comment, but the staff may still be working on that. By performing a “wildcard” search we were able to generate a list of 3,033 translator applications that were (a) filed in March, 2003 and (b) dismissed as of today. However, that list identified the applications only by file number – no reference to applicant or community of license or channel – so it’s not clear how useful that list would be to anybody.

[For the record, here’s how we performed our search: 

(1) Go to CDBS and click on “Search for Application Information”;

(2) For the following fields, enter the information indicated (see illustration):

            File Number:                   BNPFT            200303%

            Application Status:      Dismissed

            Status Date:                    02/05/2013      02/05/2013

(3) Click on “Submit Application Search” button.]

Of course, if you happen to have an idea of what you’re looking for – maybe you’re interested in a particular applicant, or a particular community, channel, state, etc. – you’re in better shape, because you can narrow down the wildcard search accordingly.  But we suspect that even such a narrowed-down quest will yield results that will require considerable patience to sift through.

If you want to see the Selection Lists and Caps Showings the Bureau has now “released”, that, too, will require considerable effort. Each applicant’s Lists/Showings submission has apparently been uploaded to CDBS, but only to the applicant’s last-filed “BNPFT” application listing. To find a particular applicant’s submission, the staff (in a footnote to the public notice) instructs you to: (a) perform a wildcard search for all FM translator applications filed by that applicant in March, 2003; (b) once that search produces a list of applications, click on the “Info” link relative to the first application at the top of the list; (c) when the Info page comes up, click on the “View Correspondence Folder” link; and then (d) click on the link labeled “Click to View Imported Letter” bearing the date February 5, 2013.   Repeat as necessary.

On the one hand, the Media Bureau is to be applauded for digging through the Selection Lists/Caps Showings submitted just last month and weeding out thousands of ten-year-old applications that were clogging up the system. The Bureau is, of course, under the gun to tee up an LPFM auction – as early as next October, if the Chairman has his way – so there was pressure to get this job done sooner rather than later, but it’s still impressive that the staff managed to handle it as quickly as it did.

On the other hand, the apparent desirability of quick action may not completely excuse the less than helpful manner in which the staff’s action has been packaged and presented to the rest of us. For example, applicants who remain hopeful that their applications may yet be granted have no easy way of determining which, if any, other applications may still be standing in their way. It’s also difficult to confirm that the list of dismissals conforms to the various Selection Lists/Caps Showings submitted by the affected applicants. Is it possible that some applications that should have been on the chopping block were inadvertently spared, or vice versa? Good luck figuring that out. Sure, we’re only talking about FM translators here, and sure, these applications have been sitting around for ten years already, for crying out loud. But does that justify imposing unusual burdens on any translator applicants still theoretically in the fight?

In the end, we suspect that the Bureau’s approach, inelegant though it may be, is not an inappropriate way to signal the start of the shut-down process for Auction 83, an auction that never really got off the ground in the first place. To be sure, some surviving applications will somehow remain to be processed and, eventually, granted. But it has long been evident that, in order even to begin to wrap things up here, drastic action would have to be taken. The Bureau’s public notice reflects such action.