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FCC Silenced Puerto Rico Radio Station's Boosters In March 2017
An dochasac writes: WAPA (680 AM) is a radio station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria took out power, phone lines, cell towers and internet, WAPA was the only Puerto Rican radio station on the air for crucial public emergency communication. But WAPA's signal coverage was significantly cut in March 2017 when the FCC refused to renew the license for synchronous AM booster stations at Arecibo, Mayaguez and Aguadilla in March due to procedural issues with the petition for renewal. This decision limited the coverage, signal strength and signal quality of this station for remote and mountainous parts of Puerto Rico where the need for emergency communications is greatest. The FCC audio division chief who pulled WAPA's synchronous booster license decided to retire a few days ago. The position is open but is focused on legal training rather than technical expertise and experience with emergency communications.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states. With IoT, cellular, mesh, satellite, social media and cognitive radio, communications technology is changing much faster than the FCC's legal efforts to regulate it. But its arcane regulations leave Puerto Rico as one of the few islands in the Caribbean without a long distance shortwave broadcast station. With line of sight FM stations offline and WAPA's AM station neutered, post-Maria Puerto Ricans have a better chance of getting news and emergency information from Havana, Cuba than from anything under the FCC's increasingly pointless jurisdiction.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states. With IoT, cellular, mesh, satellite, social media and cognitive radio, communications technology is changing much faster than the FCC's legal efforts to regulate it. But its arcane regulations leave Puerto Rico as one of the few islands in the Caribbean without a long distance shortwave broadcast station. With line of sight FM stations offline and WAPA's AM station neutered, post-Maria Puerto Ricans have a better chance of getting news and emergency information from Havana, Cuba than from anything under the FCC's increasingly pointless jurisdiction.
When it comes to incompetence, the US federal government takes the cake (and keeps it until it is stale before giving out too-small pieces to people who probably don't deserve it.) But Puerto Rico is right up there with self-serving greed, corruption, and third-world trashing of anything that doesn't have armed guards around it. Perhaps they should give up their holier-than-thou "commonwealth" charade and get a real territorial governor that could start bringing them into the late 19th century overall.
First, AM booster stations only work when they have power, so there's no weight behind the implication that communications are being affected. Second, other than the "7 words" and some advertising (cigarettes, booze) the government doesn't control content, especially political content, which is protected by this 1st Amendment thing. Third, the author apparently thinks AM radio is "shortwave." It isn't.
Finally, AM Synchronous Boosters are classified as experimental, and are licensed "with a view to the development of science or technique." When WAPA first started using them, licenses had 1 year renewable terms, reflecting their temporary nature.
Eng. Wifredo G. Blanco-Pi, the owner of WAPA, has been using this experimental license for commercial, rather than experimental, purposes for 6 years. Current rules limit the total term of experimental licenses to 5 years. So, the FCC didn't renew them the last time around. As the FCC's decision says,
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"How long did it take to just allow foreign supplies to be delivered during a major natural disaster?"
I take that as an oblique reference to the Jones Act, which has no effect on foreign supplies. It applies to shipments between US ports, and its effect is economic, so doesn't prevent any shipments.
Furthermore, the current issue is not getting supplies to PR, it's getting them off the docks there and on to where they need to be due to blocked roads and a lack of truckers. Making it cheaper to put a cargo container on the dock isn't currently helping the situation at all.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
ok, and so therefore?
Therefore any claim that WAPA was being punished for being a progressive voice is null and voided.
WAPA had already replaced the boosters with existing stations which it bought in the respective cities of Puerto Rico, but they were not operative due to the effects of the storm... just as the boosters would not have been operative.
The issue is simply that the storm was so destructive that only 4 or 5 stations were able to stay on the air or return to the air immediately after (WIPR, WKAQ, WAPA, WODA, WUNO) and the ability to operate and serve the Island had as its only limiting factor the logistics of getting transmitters on the air and getting staff members to a place where they could broadcast.
For example, WKAQ had its building nearly destroyed, but within a few hours, they were on the air from the transmitter site which has an emergency studio. WKAQ has, for many decades, been the leading news and talk station in Puerto Rico.
In many other cases, station owners sent their staff home before the storm. Most stations in PR do not have a news department, so placing the staff of each station in danger would have been irresponsible. In fact, many stations outside the San Juan and other big city metro areas have studios at the transmitter and that location is typically low, moist and flat and in a flood zone... so those stations had no way of staying on the air.
Reality is a bummer.