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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

FCC just cares that the paperwork is filed and nobody complains.

Just because you have a license doesn't mean you have to use it.

> The radio station had an FCC license that required they operate an AM transmitter. Now that the FCC has found out that they are not broadcasting on AM, the station is not allowed to continue on FM.

This (from the other thread) seems to be the pertinent part.

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Actually you are obligated to use a license, or to return it. You cannot hold a license for the AM/FM/TV broadcast bands and not operate on it for any length of time.

As a comparison value: in Germany, you can loose your FM license for inactivity if you broadcast 90 seconds of silence. We had to care for stuff like this when we did some remote discussion rounds on community radio during the pandemic and had to have some logic close to the transmitter that would add innocuous background music if anything went wrong upstream.

Dead air is a very big deal in the US too. The argument is something like "licensees exist to serve the public and obviously dead air does not serve, but more importantly means that a listener might stay tuned into silence when an emergency alert is broadcast over all other stations".

It's sort of tenuous, although not wrong. Off-air is a better state than dead air.

in the 90s I remember 2-3 songs that had a couple seconds of dead-air, and the stations would modify them to play cheesy sound effects during that time. I always thought they were paranoid about someone changing the channel, but now I think it is more to be compliant.

Actually I think your first idea is more likely. I don't think the FCC would be concerned about a short gap in a song, or a pause in conversation, or a silent part of a live performance, etc.

But commercial program directors are neurotic beasts. And listeners can definitely be fickle!

One story I've heard is that PDs obsess over car listeners, who are punching "seek" (or a different preset) at the slightest provocation. They believed that a couple-second silent gap in a song would lose X listeners. They might have even had data to back it up.

I've seen song gaps trimmed, or filled with a quick station ID. Philistines!

I used to change channels like that! with terrestrial radio at least, because you can skip commercials quickly and then skip songs you don't like! Now with XM taking slightly longer to tune, (and with age) I do it less.

This is the difference between theory, and practice - pretty clearly here.

> Just because you have a license doesn't mean you have to use it

This is completely untrue for broadcast licenses.

https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/special-temporary-authority#....

An operator is allocated radio spectrum so stands to reason it’s use-it-or-lose-it.

Your first two sentences are contradicted by the quote and your followup.

Ues the FCC cares and yes they must use it, when using the FM teansmitter.

The FCC most certainly should be monitoring these compliance requirements. I suspect someone at the FCC noticed they weren't transmitting, asked, then the owner claimed the just found out.. someone stole the tower!

The FCC cares, but they do not monitor.

They do not have the resources or the coverage to monitor broadcasters.

Which probably makes sense - either listeners or other broadcasters will complain, or a problem is not that urgent. And eventually the licensee will call the New York Times, everyone will find out, and the FCC can take action.

It seems the AM station was missing for at least a year, so evidently the FCC wasn't paying very close attention. They probably didn't notice/care until somebody else brought it to their attention.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the situation was something along the lines of: they were having financial difficulties and decided they could get away with not broadcasting on AM…sold the tower and equipment for scrap. Eventually someone notices and notifies the FCC. FCC contacts the operator and eventually they send out a bush hog crew to make the “discovery”.

This is the most plausible explanation I can imagine.

Indeed, which is the sort of scenario I eluded to.

One thing we need to realize, that as computing types, we think of monitoring differently.

Monitoring need not be real time. A yearly inspection can be done. Quarterly. Audits.

Even grocery stores don't get daily or even weekly health inpections.

Well, that's true. But the FCC has clear regulations.

Remote broadcast transmitter monitoring is explicitly real-time. Or it's non-compliant and subject to fines and license revocation.

How would they have realtime monitoring unless they have a receiver in every city in the country? This happened in Jasper Alabama, not Los Angeles California.

I think its possible that they only send someone out once a year to check for active frequencies. When they see a problem (AM 1259 is missing) then they send out the brush crew.

Point being, I highly doubt that realtime monitoring exists everywhere. The owner of this station probably banked on the fact that no one's watching Jasper Alabama that closely. When someone at the FCC gets their annual paperwork about this station, they probably just do a cursory check on it and push it through, not putting a lot of time or energy into this tiny station.

The FCC does not monitor stations at all.

The station has an FCC-mandated responsibility for real-time and responsive monitoring of their transmitters.

> Just because you have a license doesn't mean you have to use it.

Um, what? Please, show me where the license agreement says this.

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