This article is available for free at Substack:
https://recnet.substack.com/p/fcc-to-open-a-filing-window-for-noncommercial
In a public notice, the Federal Communications Commission has announced a filing window for new construction permits for full-service noncommercial educational (NCE) television stations.
The filing window will be open from December 4 through December 11, 2024.
To participate in the window, the organization must be an educational institution, such as a school or university, a government entity which does not operate a school or a “nonprofit educational organization”.
For “nonprofit educational organizations”, the public notice states that in order for a non-school, non-government entity to hold a NCE TV license, at least 50% of the governing board or leaders are representative of a broad cross-section of community elements. They must certify that persons in leadership positions such as officers, directors and members of its governing board are representative of the educational, cultural, and civic segments of the principal community to be served in order to establish their basic qualifications. They provide examples of “elements of the community” to include businesses, charities, civic, neighborhood and fraternal organizations as well as culture, education, environment, government, labor, military, minority and ethnic groups. For the governing board or leadership to be considered broadly representative, the applicant must have at least four different elements of the community among its leadership.
This is a huge difference compared to the board member requirements that applied to noncommercial educational applicants in the 2021 NCE FM filing window. In addition, the applicant must provide an educational statement showing how the station will be used to advance an educational program, certification that the applicant has the funds to build the station and operate it for three months and certification that they have proper site assurance.
Allotments available in this window
Unlike NCE radio where 20 channels at the bottom of the dial are reserved for NCE use, the DTV table of allotments includes channels that are reserved for NCE use. These channels were added to table through previous rulemaking proceedings.
Applications in this filing window must specify service for the following communities of license and on the following channels:
- Vernon, AL - channel 4
- Anchorage, AK - channel 26
- Bethel, AK - channel 3
- Colusa, CA - channel 2
- Fort Bragg, CA - channel 4
- Tulare, CA - channel 3
- Filer, ID - channel 18
- Ames, IA - channel 21
- Alamogordo, NM - channel 4
- Jacksonville, OR - channel 4
- Waco, TX - channel 20
- Waynesboro, VA - channel 12
As you can see here, a significant number of these allotments are on undesirable VHF low band channels. Despite the low band channel, the mere presence of the station could eventually entitle the station to carriage on cable systems, direct broadcast satellite providers and IPTV providers such as DIRECTV Stream and YouTube TV.
The point system used for mutually exclusive applicants is pretty similar to what is used for NCE radio:
- Established Local Applicant: 3 points (headquarters, campus or 75% of the board within 25 miles of the reference coordinates of the community of license).
- Diversity of Ownership: 2 points (does not have any other TV station (including Class A TV stations) with overlapping community coverage contours.)
- Statewide Network: 2 points (provides classroom programming to accredited schools. Can’t be claimed if diversity is claimed.)
- Technical Points: Like radio, 1 point for a 10% better proposal and 2 points for a 25% better proposal based on the land area and population of the station’s noise limited service contour.
Tiebreakers will be somewhat like radio where first it will be based on the number of authorizations the organization has. The second tie breaker is for pending applications including other new and major change applications. Unlike radio, there is no third tiebreaker because of a point system defeat in a previous window.
Allotment-based proceedings, like this TV filing window, do not use Threshold Fair Distribution like the 2021 NCE window did because when the channel was added to the table of allotments, it was determined at that time, that the allotment meets the §307(b) requirements for fair distribution between the states and communities.
The FCC has also declared a freeze on any new petitions to amend the Table of Allotments for new reserved NCE TV channels.
There will be a filing freeze starting on December 3 for channel change rulemaking petitions, all minor and major change applications for full-service and Class A TV stations. Despite the limited areas where the allotments will be available for the window, the freeze is going to apply nationwide to all channels (2~36).
Because there are no allotments for TV Channel 6 in this window, REC has determined that this window will have no impact to LPFM stations.
REC does not provide any professional services to support TV applications at this time.
