Channel 6 and NCE's
What does television channel 6 have to do with the non-commercial, educational radio band? NCE's are located between 88.1 to 91.9 MHz. Channel 6 is located between 82-88 MHz. Because in close proximity to each other, NCE radio can impose interference to TV 6 viewers near the NCE radio broadcast location. The FCC has prescribed rules that NCE applicants need to abide by in where that can propose a new station. Quite frequently, in television markets that contain a channel 6 station, limitations are placed on starting new NCE stations. Sometimes vacant radio channels cannot even be applied for due to unacceptable levels of interference imposed on Channel 6. All NCE applicants need to abide by rules in 73.525.
In the 2007 NCE application filing window, although many analog Channel 6 stations were migrating to other channels, the proposed NCE needed to protect the analog Channel 6 even if that Channel 6 facility was to shortly move to another channel. See:
In late 2009, the FCC announced finally that NCEs could disregard vacated Channel 6 frequencies in their applications for modification, however all pending applications from the 2007 filing window still needed to provide protection of the vacated channel even though it may not exist anymore.
If your organization current holds the license to an NCE facility in former analog Channel 6 designated region that has been vacated, October 2009-January 24, 2010 is prime time to have an engineer see if any signal upgrades are possible. On January 25, the open-ended LPTV filing window opens, allowing for applicants to endlessly apply for channel 6. This means NCE applicants could be endlessly mired in adhering to outdated protection regimes.