In March, when the FCC decided the fate of over 6,000 FM Translator pending applications from the 2003 Auction 83 window, they had two objectives.  First they had to comply with the Local Community Radio Act of 2010 which states that LPFM and FM translator licenses must be available based on community need.  They also needed to address an issue by REC and many others regarding the excessive speculative filing of applications during the Auction 83 window which REC referred to at that time as the "Great Translator Invasion". 

To address the issues with the LCRA, the FCC developed the concept of "channel floors" and grids which turned into spectrum limited and available markets as well as LPFM protected channel/points. 

On Monday, the FCC had released software that can be used to determine the protected channel/points of LPFM stations.

REC has ran this software and used the results to rebuild our protected channel/points database. In the past, this was done through the REC Channel Search technology but now that we know exactly which channel points the FCC is intending on protecting, the LPFM Tool has been updated with those channel/points.

To see the protected channel points for every market, visit the REC Channel Points viewer:
http://cdbs.recnet.net:8080/chanpoints.php

Starting in mid-May, REC will begin development on revamping the Census support across the REC Broadcast Services family of products including the LPFM Search Tool and ENAC.

This project will include updating our existing products (front end and back end) from vintage 2000 census data to vintage 2010.

Unlike other REC projects, this project will likely be done on a "flash cut" basis where 2000 vintage census data will be used until we have cleared the 2010 versions from testing. Keep watching the Home Page and the LPFM Tool release notes for updates on this project.

This project may take some time as there are differences in the 2010 census datasets vs. 2000.