Due to all the conversation about use of 87.7 and 87.9 FM I've been checking those frequencies lately for activity.
Tonight while helping a friend install a new TV I found one! I ran the auto-channel scan and channel 6 analog showed up. When we tuned to TV channel 6 the call sign for an LPFM showed up and they were playing latino music.
Driving home I tuned in on the radio at 87.7 and for 12 miles it was blastin'. Full quieting with no picket fencing at all. Never heard them ID.
I'll tune analog TV 6 here, get the callsign and check 'em out.
And here it is: WLFM-LP Cleveland, Ohio. Read about the station HERE.
It starts with LPFM licensed stations, the question is will the FCC eventually legalize part 15 own there? We can only hope. It would certainly stifle some if the issues with Hobby broadcasters on FM.
The short summary of my post: WLFM is a TV station. 87.7 will not be made available for part 15 use.
That is a low power analog Television (LPTV) station. The license it is operating under has nothing to do with FM other than the audio carrier at 87.75 MHz is frequency modulated. WLFM chose the call sign WLFM probably to be cute or help with branding a TV license as a pseudo radio station; the FM in the call sign does not make it an FM radio station.
There have been several items put before the FCC to preserve the 87.7 Franken FM’s. LP/CA/TV translators were going to go all digital but particularly the CH6 LPTVs being used as radio stations fought that. A company came up with a way to do digital television that most ATSC TV’s could decode but allowed for an analog audio carrier at 87.7; they wanted the FCC to allow that.
But there is the joke in all of that: if a full power station wants CH6 for digital TV so they can get cash from the incentive auction and stay on the air, they can displace LPTV and translators on channel 6. (A class A station is prevented from being bumped by a full power station, but I have a hard time imagining how a CH6 analog station being operated as a Franken FM can meet the class A requirements.) Channels 2-6 are not the best for DTV, but they allow for stations to get on the air then use must carry to get into cable head ends and satellite distribution. In the case of WPVI, a major network is on RF6 and seems to be making it work well enough.
Other than under wireless microphone rules and GPS managed white space devices, TV frequencies are off limits to unlicensed devices. For the FCC to give TV spectrum to FM broadcasters would require an act of congress.
The FCC has higher properties than part 15 FM devices. The incentive auction is going to take much of the FCC’s resources for a while; there is potentially a ton of cash on the table for everyone involved with that. Then there are 4 AM related FM translator actions that will happen over the next few years.
So within the next couple of years the FM dial is going to be packed with AM to FM translators. The UHF TV band is going to be shrunk and the stations repacked. The VHF high band (TV 7-13) and VHF low band (TV 2-6) will be packed as tightly as possible by stations leaving the UHF band.
And no wonder WLFM is full quieting over a large area as they are running a 3 kilowatt audio carrier.
It's interesting that on one TV I see their video which is just a call sign, no audio. On another TV there is no video, just audio.