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Frequently Asked Questions

Prometheus' crackerjack team of technical types shares the most frequently asked questions and provides the answers.

The Question

What is my application status

The Answer

You can monitor your application status by going to the FCC URL and do the following tasks:

1 Go to [http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs
/pubacc/prod/app_sear.htm]

2 Click the following fields:

Service - FM Low Power;

Application type - Original Construction Permit;

State - Your applicant name and/or put in facility ID or channel or frequency...

Then hit submit search, The next window will reveal your application. Click Info and read the status line.

The Question

How do I know if my application is competing with any others

The Answer

You begin by following the same initial proceedure above. Pull up your application by going to the FCC URL and do the following tasks:

1 Go to [http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs
/pubacc/prod/app_sear.htm]

2 Click the following fields:

Service - FM Low Power;

Application type - Original Construction Permit;

State - Your applicant name and/or put in facility ID or channel or frequency...

Then hit submit search, The next window will reveal your application.

To determine if you are conflicting with anyone, enter your frequency in the box for frequency, and your state, and the under service look under low power. Don't put anything in the applicant name box, and make sure the other boxes are clear too. Hit search and that will give you a list of everyone who applied on that frequency in the state. You can look at their applications and size them up. Check if any of them are within 24 kilometers of your location. You can use the FCC website "distance tool" at http://www.fcc.gov/mmb/asd/bickel/distance.html You can give this tool any two coordinates and it will tell you the distance between them. Use the distance figuring method for FM- the first method, "Distance Per Sections". (not the "great circle method." Then click on Submit the Data Enter your proposed co-ordinates in one window, and your competitions co-ordinates in the other window. If you are less than 24 kilometers away, on the same channel, you will be grouped together as "MX".

Also make sure to check any other states that your state borders on, within 24 kilometers.

If you passed that test, now check your adjacent channels. If you are less than 14 kilometers away from another on an adjacent channel (i.e. if you applied on 91.3, try 91.5 and 91.1), you are also "MX." This means that you are 'mutually exclusive', that is in competition with another applicant(s) for the same frequency.

There is no minimum distance to second or higher adjacencies between proposed LPFM stations. If you are closer than 33 kilometers to the Canadian border, or 19 kilometers to the Mexican border, call us because this situation is slightly more complicated.

The FCC will take some time before it takes the next step, including informing you about your application status. In dealing with the FCC around LPFM, it is important to realize that LPFM is a brand new service and the rules are not all set in stone yet. No one has done this before, and the FCC itself has not really figured out a lot of its procedures and processes that are going to be used in this service. It's important to realize that when you talk to an FCC staff person, sometimes you are just getting their opinion of how things should get done, not necessarily how things will ultimately be decided.

The first thing they do is release a list of "grantable" applications. These are the applications that do not have any MX applications competing for the same frequency. Upon release of that list, there is a thirty day window in which any member of the public (but more likely than not, a broadcaster in your town) can check your application and point out to the FCC that there is an inaccuracy on it. They do this by submitting a formal "petition to deny." If your application is truthful and correct, you have nothing to fear. Still, it is probably worth contacting an attorney upon receipt of a petition to deny, to make sure that everything is correct from a procedural standpoint. We have enclosed a copy of the guide produced by the Media Access Project on this subject. Once the petition to deny period is over, you can expect that the FCC will probably send out your construction permit within a few months. If someone files a petition to deny against your application, they are required by law to send you a copy via certified mail. From the day that you receive your construction permit, you have 18 months to build your station

After they have finished dealing with the grantables, the FCC will start considering the MX or competing situations. First the FCC will prepare a list of mutually exclusive (referred to by the FCC as MX) applications, organized into groups of applicants for the same frequency in the same area. Please note that geographic distance between sites is what makes you a group- If you were applying in New York City, you could be grouped with someone from all the way in Northern New Jersey and someone else in Connecticut. The applicants you are grouped with depends only on the distance between your sites, not the locality that you are trying to serve.

Once the list comes out of MX groups, you have 30 days to propose a formal time sharing agreement among stations in your area. If you can not come to an agreement, the license will be split between you and the other entities. A sample time sharing agreement can be viewed at http://www.microradio.org/apply.htm#tech

If you discover that you are competing with another group for a frequency, contact MIP or Prometheus as soon as possible. As soon as the last filing window for LP100s is complete, we will begin preparing a guide to handling MX situations. It is our hope that many of these situations will be handled quickly and fairly. You may want to investigate your competitors and make sure that they genuinely intend to do local radio. If they do want to do a real local station, you will probably need to find some way to make a mutually beneficial peace with them. If you discover that they are not truly local, or have made patently fraudulent statements in their application, it may be advisable to initiate a petition to deny against them.

Do not be surprised if this process takes many months. The FCC has a very small staff for processing these applications. Also, please understand that there are some questions that you have which no one can answer. The FCC itself has not decided how it will handle some unanticipated situations, and they have not set a timeline for when certain parts of this process will happen. The FCC has no way of knowing how many applicants will apply for frequencies, or how much staff time it will take to implement some of the new policies or procedures in LPFM.