A busy week at 99.9 Fountain Green

[CAwasinNJ]

The new station at Fountain Green now has a callsign. It's KPVO. It's also filed an application for license to cover saying it's operating. I can't pick up anything on 99.9 but I may be too far north to get them. Anyone in the Provo area getting anything there?

Then it gets really interesting. They've also filed an application to downgrade from a class C1 to A and from 11.5kw to 100 watts that will cover Fountain Green, Moroni and very little else. It's a massive downgrade. There are two reasons I can think of why they might do this. One is to protect KUAA-LP, the new LPFM in Salt Lake. The other is that KLZX (scheduled to move to 99.9 as part of infamous docket 05-243) is planning an upgrade.

Thoughts?

[amanuensis]

I heard nothing but static today in Provo and Orem as I was driving on 99.9.

[CAwasinNJ]

The application to downgrade has been approved, so at this point I wouldn't expect anyone outside the immediate Fountain Green area to hear anything from them. Interestingly the original on channel booster in Provo is still active though it's now well outside the coverage area. I assume that will disappear at some point since that isn't allowed.

[amanuensis]

If the booster is active, that could explain why I seem to hear louder static on 99.9 than I do on 99.7 and 100.1.

[CAwasinNJ]

What you're hearing on 99.7 and 100.1 isn't static. That's the digital carrier for the IBOC on KJMY and KSFI. It sounds like a slightly quieter version of white noise, but it's actually digital data. First adjacent to a station that doesn't have digital sideburns you would hear a distorted version of the analog signal.

[CAwasinNJ]

Now everything makes a little more sense.

The original construction permit was about to expire, so the owners built a minimal facility just to get it on the air. They immediately filed to restore the original C1 11.5kw allocation that they had.

[drpepper]

i'm surprised the FCC let them do that, even though they filed for their original application the next day, only because i saw several weeks ago on RadioInsight that the FCC wants people to stick to what they originally filed for and that they weren't going to grant temp phasilities. i could only read part of it because it was a premium story, i don't have that subscription. i'm sure there are exceptions however, and I hope they can get this signal on the air soon. I'm curious what they plan to do for this signal to have listeners and make money compeeting against midUtahRadio. KPUT mona was also granted a temp phasility, and I think they also planned to be back at their original power. i believe i saw somewhere that Alex media is trying to sell it though, can't remember for sure.

[CAwasinNJ]

Stations can downgrade at any time. It's not common but it definitely happens. What happened here wasn't a temporary facility. It was a downgrade to a lower class. There's no indication that the station is not on the air. Since they received their license to cover, it can be reasonably assumed that the broadcast facilities were constructed per what was in that application. At that point they just need to run *something* on the air and everything is fine. The question now is whether the FCC will grant the upgrade back to what they had before. There are issues with other stations and allotments and trying to get that sorted out was I think the at least part of why they were delaying the construction of the original station and had to start this whole thing. That starts to get into serious FCC legal mumbo jumbo, but if you really want to read about it you can find all the applications at licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/app_list.pl?Facility_id=190393 I'd make sure you're sufficiently caffeinated first though.