WASHINGTON, DC—The 2019 NAB Show is likely to include such broadcast industry topics as the FCC quadrennial review of broadcast rules, ATSC 3.0, and broadcast industry deregulation. The FCC is expected to release a draft version of FM translator interference rules at or shortly before the show, and Womble Bond Dickinson telecom attorney John Garziglia discussed this with Communications Daily.

Garziglia said that when the draft is released, radio broadcasters will be interested in “the contour outside which radio interference is allowed and the FCC’s plans for gauging the legitimacy of interference complaints.”

The FCC quadrennial review is likely to include a relaxing of radio station ownership rules, particularly subcaps—limitations on the number of AM or FM stations that one company can own in a single market. While some say this debate may delay radio station transactions, as would-be buyers wait to see what the FCC decides, Garziglia told Communications Daily that a delay won’t necessarily be the case.

“Seventy to 80 percent of radio transactions don’t involve the subcaps at all,” he said.

Click here to read “QR, 3.0, M&A Expected to Dominate NAB Show 2019” in Communications Daily (subscription required).

John Garziglia represents radio and television broadcasters, offering personalized assistance in all areas of communications and telecommunications law including transactional and contract negotiations for broadcast station mergers and acquisitions, the securing of financing, governmental auctions of new frequencies, license renewals, new stations applications, facility changes, facility upgrades, licensing, and compliance with FCC rules, regulations and policies.

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