EVENT RADIO SERVICE PROPOSED

A Petition for Rule Making has been submitted to the FCC to create an "Event Radio Service." This service is intended to be used at concerts, sporting events and other short-term live productions. The service is to be located in the FM broadcast band with power and height restrictions. No comment date has been set.

Graham Brock company newsletter, November 2008

I would think that Part 15 adequately covers this. In emergency situations, the FCC has been known to authorize a STA for this purpose.

I would support a Part 15 change that would allow 1 watt ERP.

1 watt easily covers a couple of miles, and could easily cause interference to licensed FM's.

If it's for an event, who cares?

Another question: How much is a day of airtime worth? Let's say from 10:00AM to 8:00PM?

With spots?

Or, without and it's just gonna contain whatever the buyer wants, given it's not something horrible, or against the rules and such?

Let's also say it's a middle of the road station too. Not the top performer and not a bottom feeder.

Missing: That's a little like asking how much a house is worth. Depends on the neighborhood, condition, trends, market conditions, etc.

IF the station were maxed out, then the formula would be N*ASR*H=R (N=Number of Spots per hour; ASR=Average Spot Rate; H=Hours; R=Revenue). You would extend that formula *7 Days a week *365 Days a year to get your maximum annual (If you're smoking something and selling to stockholders in the year 2000) revenue.

Best case scenario: Let's assume you had a sold-out spot load of 12 spots per hour M-Sun 10A-8P. Further assume an average spot rate of $100 for an average station in Portland (that's pretty high)and your numbers would look like this:
12*100*12=$14,400 for your imaginary, hitting on all cylinders, 12 hour block of airtime.

The spot loads will be so low in January that several stations would be happy with half (or less) of that.

Your mileage may vary. Actual mileage will be no where near this.

C'mon sales reps lurking out there, chime in with what you think.

Oops. I called it a 12 hour period. 10A to 8P is 10 hours. So your special Black Friday price is only $12,000. Call now!

I think the key word here is "event"...no spots sold just carrying the audio of a live event...wonder if the event could be weekly or monthly...reocurring

"I would think that Part 15 adequately covers this."

It doesn't.A Legal Part-15 FM signal will hardly make it across your bedroom. Ever use one of those FM-transmitters for iPods and such? 10ft,if you're lucky.
It's a couple blocks at the MOST,with spotty reception.

The power required to hit the part-15 Limit (250uV@3meters),feeding a standard dipole antenna,is around 11 NANOwatts. (yes,nano.)
I can fart more power than that.


"I would support a Part 15 change that would allow 1 watt ERP."

Hear Hear! Then maybe Part-15 might be useful.

"1 watt easily covers a couple of miles, and could easily cause interference to licensed FM's."

It *could* cover a couple miles,with a proper antenna,and good height.
Assuming a "temporary/mobile" setup,The antenna probably won't be up very high..possibly on some kind of tripod or something?

I've found that 1W,using an 'average' antenna,and height will get you about 1-mile of usable coverage,it gets spotty after that.

Some of the LPFM's can throw quite a signal,using only a couple of watts,but keep in mind they have the advantage of a good quality antenna,and a nice tall tower!
With VHF height is everything,since it's pretty dependent on a clear line-of-sight.

I would think in most of American there is an adjacent clear channel somewhere on the FM dial that could be research out and used for a day at 1 watt that would have no interference complaints from licensed stations. To me the next question would be is how often can I have my "special event"?

Monkeyboy:

I should have clarified that when I said that Part 15 adequately covers this, I meant that for the use of the FM band for temporary "special event" purposes.

Then I clarified that I agree that the power maximums are too low and that a 1 watt ERP should be allowed.

Note, that doesn't mean that I think you should be allowed 1 watt into a high gain antenna. You should be required to lower the power to maintain the 1 watt ERP in order to minimize interference.