[BC] AM Stations cranking it up on Football Night

[Phil Alexander]

Bill,

The point is that anyone (in range as WFGW seems to be)
authorized = > 250 W night power can complain about a
co-channel cheater to the FCC if they want to because 
they have legal standing as an injured party.  It doesn't 
matter what kind of programming they do - only that they 
are on the frequency and protected from co-channel 
interference by their license.

WINS should complain informally, but as Robert says, 
they have bigger fish to fry and just don't care. The 
point is that there is little or no IX incoming to 
their primary coverage in NYC.

The FCC is overloaded with work AND they are reluctant 
to enter "competitive" situations, although IMHO in this
case they should.

The bottom line is the FCC EB would have someone with 
an FIM sitting on WHIN on a Friday night **IF** WINS 
complained, and if WFGW complained informally, they
probably would do the same thing to make an example
and collect a fine - staff tasking permitting.

The one thing I can say is the EB staff is heavily 
tasked and their budget squeezed, so informal complaints
work only if the details given to them are very specific.
They are not going to have someone sitting on a FIM in
Gallatin, TN, on a Friday night to catch WHIN running
football at full or partial daytime power unless they 
KNOW they can write a fine.

If Scott wants to get them caught, the best thing would
be to lie low and keep a record of times they operate at 
1 or 5 kW at night for the next six weeks or so, to predict 
when they will be doing it near the end of the season. 
With that information passed along through the right hands,
an informal complaint just might nail them, especially if 
Powell could get WFGW behind the report.

It's not that the FCC/EB doesn't want to enforce the power,
but exceeding power limits is only a $4,000 fine and the
cost to generate that fine versus, say $7,000 for a broken
tower fence gate proven by taking a picture during normal 
working hours while driving around a predetermined route of
stations has to be considered (from a budget standpoint).
If the station (WHIN) also had an unreported tower light 
outage and/or a fence problem and perhaps a history of 
violations, that might make the football game power issue 
more interesting to the EB. But, the fact is their resources
are severely limited and their interest can become a function
of the size of the fine expected versus the cost needed to
prove the violation.

---------------------------------------------
Phil Alexander, CSRE, AMD
Broadcast Engineering Services and Technology 
(a Div. of Advanced Parts Corporation) 
Ph. (317) 335-2065   FAX (317) 335-9037


On 1 Sep 2008 at 13:15, BOYDSIRBOYD at aol.com wrote:


> just a reminder that WFGW does not do any sports what-so-ever.