System/Policy

NPR asks FCC to delay, rethink low-power FM

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NPR took a different tack March 16 in the ongoing assault on the FCC’s controversial plan to license low-power FM (LPFM) stations. Lawmakers and the National Association of Broadcasters have opposed the measure outright, but in a petition for reconsideration and a motion for stay, NPR asked the agency to take another look at some aspects of LPFM and delay implementing the proposal until July 15. Specifically, NPR requested greater protections for translators, radio reading services, full-power stations on third adjacent channels from LPFM stations, and potential digital radio technology. The network says the motion for stay would allow more time for NPR and FCC lab and field tests of interference expected to be caused by LPFM stations. On Feb.

About Current

A 20th anniversary letter from the editor

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Twenty years is an anniversary round enough to permit us at Current to indulge in some hoorah, and to recognize the people who have made the paper possible for two decades. Marking the occasion, we published an updated edition of the paperback A History of Public Broadcasting last month, and inaugurated a companion website of the field’s historical documents, Public Broadcasting PolicyBase (PBPB). Since its first issue, March 17, 1980, Current has grown in many respects — in professionalism, in average page count (threefold), in circulation (fivefold), in advertising support (vastly), and in sustainability. (The growth allows and requires us to expand our staff this year, adding a fourth editor.)

It’s our pleasure to work on a community newspaper for a community full of so many people with fine passions, admirable skills, high ideals and damned good fights. It’s a community paper for a community the size of a small town but spread across a continent.

Development

Reduction of fine to WTTW for underwriting violations, 2000

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In March 2000, the FCC reduced its 1997 fine of public TV station WTTW, finding that three of the four underwriting credits at issue were permissible after all. The original fine was levied in December 1997. [Text of 1997 letter.]

Before the Federal Communications Commission Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of Window to the World Communications, Inc., Licensee of Station WTTW(TV), Chicago, IL, Facility ID #10802
For a Forfeiture
File No. 97040529

FORFEITURE ORDER
Adopted: March 3, 2000 Released: March 6, 2000
By the Chief, Enforcement Bureau:

1. In this Order, we grant the request of Window to the World Communications, Inc. (“WTTW”), licensee of noncommercial television station WTTW(TV), Chicago, Illinois, for a reduction in the $5,000 forfeiture proposed in a Notice of Apparent Liability (“NAL”) issued for violation of the statutory prohibition against the broadcast of advertisements on noncommercial stations.