[BC] Translator 'land-grabs'

[Mark Humphrey]

On 2/28/07, Scott Fybush <scott at fybush.com> wrote:
> I'm no fan of land-grabs like this either, but there's this to be said
> for the process: it's eminently democratic. You or I could just as
> easily have applied for all those translators, and even if the FCC
> wasn't yet allowing FM translators for AMs (even under what I'll now
> call a "South Carolina STA"), they could easily have been parked as
> translators of something else inoffensive and non-competitive while
> awaiting an eventual rules changed.
>
> That, after all, is what WRHI quietly did, and it certainly paid off for
> them.

I'm not sure we would have had a chance in Rock Hill.  The translator
WRHI is now authorized to use was originally granted to rebroadcast a
co-owned FM, WRHM.  If you or I had filed a competing application (and
proposed rebroadcasting a distant station), I believe they still would
have been given an automatic preference as a "fill-in" service.

Mark