[HCDX] Re: 288 licences up for auction

["Mike Terry" <miketerry73@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Billings Gazette
November 2, 2004
Washington DC

Gary Smithwick worked as a radio announcer during high school and college.

This week, the D.C. telecommunications lawyer will try to buy a radio
station.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will auction 288 licenses that
grant authority to build commercial FM stations in specified towns and
cities across the country.

As many as 456 applicants will bid on licenses.

"It's like a lottery ticket. People see the licenses and think, 'Maybe
there's an investment opportunity for me,"' said Smithwick, a former FCC
attorney.

The auction, which begins Wednesday, will be the first since 1999 to sell
spectrum on the FM dial, and has generated interest among radio
conglomerates, regional broadcasters and individuals.

At least 47 individuals and companies, including Mr. Smithwick's B&S
Broadcasting Co., have been approved by the FCC to bid on a license to build
an FM station in Nassawadox, Va., a blip of a town on Virginia's Eastern
Shore with 572 persons but no radio station.

The licenses most in demand are for stations in Carmel Valley, Calif., and
Taft, Calif. Nearly 80 applicants have indicated they will bid on each
license.

"I have been in this business a long time, and I was shocked at the number
of applications for licenses," said George Reed, managing director of Media
Services Group, a media brokerage firm in Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nation's largest broadcasting
company, with about 1,200 radio stations, filed papers with the FCC
indicating it will bid on just one license - for a station in rural Manson,
Iowa.

LUK Broadcasting LLC, owned by the behemoth holding company Leucadia
National Corp., which earlier this year said it wanted to buy all of MCI
Corp.'s outstanding stock, will bid on up to 286 licenses.

Individual investors and radio junkies also will participate in the auction.
"There are ÃbiddersÄ who are literally people off the street," said Todd
Stansbury, a lawyer in the media group at Wiley, Rein and Fielding, a firm
in the District.

He predicted the unprecedented interest in new FM stations will make the
licenses costly.

"Given the fact that we've not seen an auction for five years, I would
expect people to be willing to pay. The interesting part to me will be how
much people are willing to pay," Mr. Stansbury said.

The 1999 auction raised $57.8 million. This year's auction could raise
hundreds of millions of dollars.

Each license goes to the highest bidder. Companies participating in the
auction had to pay a percentage of the value of a license on which they want
to bid before the auction, and the FCC has nearly $81 million in upfront
money. LUK Broadcasting has put up $10.8 million.

The FCC is holding the auction now because of demand for new radio stations.
There are 6,218 commercial FM stations, but many towns and small cities are
without their own broadcaster.

People have asked for stations in these 288 towns and cities because none is
home to a licensed station, even though they are within range of other
broadcasters, said Peter Doyle, chief of the audio division of the FCC's
Media Bureau.

Towns throughout the Midwest, West and South are getting most of the new
commercial FM radio stations. There are 28 licenses available for stations
in Texas, 20 in Colorado, 18 in Montana and 17 in Wyoming.

The license for a station in Nassawadox is the only one available in
Virginia, and no licenses are available for new stations in Maryland or the
District.

The signal strength of the stations, which could open within three years,
will vary from 3,000 watts to 100,000 watts, based on the classification the
FCC has attached to each license.

Mr. Smithwick and his business partner, Arthur Belendiuk, aren't thinking
about the type of station they want to start. They simply want to obtain a
license to broadcast.

"We're pretty flexible. Will we play country music? I don't know. I don't
care. What you do first is get authorization," he said.

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/11/02/build/business/56-fcc.inc


---[Start Commercial]---------------------

World Radio TV Handbook 2005 is coming out. Preorder yours and support open communications for DXers:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823077942/hardcoredxcom

---[End Commercial]-----------------------
________________________________________
Hard-Core-DX mailing list
Hard-Core-DX@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/
_______________________________________________

THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed
and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License
published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt