The NAB’s Vice President of Legal and Regulatory Affairs Rick Kaplan met with the FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry to discuss translators and media ownership rules.
The NAB says interference issues between full-power FMs and translators “remains a persistent problem” and Kaplan petitioned the FCC to adopt the
proposals submitted by the NAB group to “facilitate efficient disposition” of the conflicts. Most notably, the NAB suggests the Commission give operators the ability to relocate translators anywhere on the FM dial as a “minor change” to a facility—instead of only to an adjacent or IF-related channel—to resolve interference complaints. Additionally, since the FCC planning to revisit its media ownership rules, Kaplan made a case for a petition which seeks to change how ownership caps are calculated in embedded markets.