About Wave Farm
 
Some towers go up, some down, and some never get planted
Apr 02, 2015 10:15 pm
Randy J. Stine in Radio World noted last week that two TV antennas were installed atop One World Trade Center in New York City, with test broadcasts now for the UHF and VHF trial arrays. The Durst Organization, owners of the now-tallest building in New York City, will test transmissions on Channel 12 for VHF and Channel 32 for UHF. Many of the antennae for radio and television stations were on top of the former World Trade Center towers, before the Sept. 11 2001 attacks brought down those towers. Since then, many antennae have moved to the Empire State Building, at 1,254 feet, with a 200-foot steel tower on top. The new skyscraper stands at 1,776 feet, and will generate larger signal patterns with the additional height. The Associated Press reports that anohter tower, this one in Crimea, is coming down, as Russian officials turned off Crimea's independent television station ATR March 31, by repeatedly refused to give it a broadcasting license. ATR broadcast to the Crimean Tatars, a native ethnic group of about 300,000 that was deported from the region by the Soviet authorities in 1944, and was a lone voice against the Russians after they took over the area from Ukraine last year. Lenur Islyamov, ATR's founder, said at a news conference March 31 that four of its filings have been rejected on technicalities. "They don't give us a license because not a single official can guarantee that at some point we won't go on air calling on people to do something," Islyamov said. Crimea's new leader, Sergei Aksyonov, said last month that ATR has filed the documents "with errors on purpose in order flare up a conflict involving the TV station." Finally, another station will never get to hang a tower, even after the WKMJ Radio Live the People Station filed to get a new low-power FM license through the Federal Communications Commission. Paul Riismandel at Radio Survivor reports Kervenson Joseph from the Pinellas Park, Florida group applying for a station, was arrested for unlicensed broadcasting while waiting for the LPFM application to be processed. Florida, New Jersey, and New York have unconstitutional state laws against unlicensed broadcasting, even though the states have no authority to regulate the public airwaves. And the FCC has a rule against awarding LPFM licenses to former pirate radio enthusiasts. So because Johnson couldn't wait for the FCC's application process to play out, he won't be broadcasting any more, at least not legally.