City of license

United States

In the United States, the Communications Act of 1934 requires that “the Commission shall make such distribution of licenses, frequencies, hours of operation, and of power among the several States and communities as to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service to each of the same.” The Federal Communications Commission interprets this as requiring that every broadcast station “be licensed to the principal community or other political subdivision which it primarily serves.” For each broadcast service, the FCC defines a standard for what it means to serve a community; for example, commercial FM radio stations are required to provide an electric field of at least 3.16 millivolts per meter (mV/m) over the entire land area of the community, whereas non-commercial educational FM stations need only provide a field strength of 1 mV/m over 50% of the community's population. This electric field contour is called the “principal community contour”.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) makes other requirements on stations relative to their communities of license; these requirements have varied over time. One example is the requirement for stations to identify themselves, by call sign and community, at sign-on, sign-off, and at the top of every hour of operation. Other current requirements include providing a local telephone number in the community's calling area (or else a toll-free number) and (in most cases) maintaining an official main studio within 25 miles of the community's geographic center.

Nominal main studio requirements

The requirement that a station maintain a main studio within a station's primary coverage area or within a maximum distance of the community of license originated in an era in which stations were legally required to generate local content and the majority of a station's local, non-network programming was expected to originate in one central studio location. In this context, the view of broadcast regulators held that an expedient way to ensure that content broadcast reflected the needs of a local community was to allocate local broadcast stations and studios to each individual city.

The nominal main studio requirement has become less relevant with the introduction of videotape recorders in 1956 (which allowed local content to be easily generated off-site and transported to stations), the growing portability of broadcast-quality production equipment due to transistorization and the elimination of requirements (in 1987 for most classes of US broadcast stations) that broadcasters originate any minimum amount of local content.

While the main studio concept nominally remains in US broadcast regulations, and certain administrative requirements (such as the local employment of a manager and the equivalent of at least one other full-time staff member, as well as the maintenance of a public inspection file) are still applied, removal of the requirement that stations originate local content greatly weakens the significance of maintaining a local main studio. A facility capable of originating programming and feeding it to a transmitter must still exist, but under normal conditions there most often is no requirement that these local studio actually be in active use to originate any specific local programming.

In many cases, the use of centralcasting and broadcast automation has greatly weakened the role and importance of manual control by staff at the nominal local station studio facilities.

Exceptions to these rules have been made by regulators, primarily on a case-by-case basis, to deal with "satellite stations": transmitters which are licensed to comply with the technical requirements of full service broadcast facilities and have their own independent call signs and communities of license but are used simply as full-power broadcast translators to rebroadcast another station. These are most often non-commercial educational stations or stations serving thinly populated areas which otherwise would be too small to support an independent local full-service broadcaster.

Political considerations

The requirement that a full-service station maintain local presence in its community of license has been used by proponents of localism and community broadcasting as a means to oppose the construction and use of local stations as mere rebroadcasters or satellite-fed translators of distant stations. Without specific requirements for service to the local community of license, stations could be constructed in large number by out-of-region broadcasters who feed transmitters via satellite and offer no local content.

There also has been a de facto preference by regulators to encourage the assignment of broadcast licenses to smaller cities which otherwise would have no local voice, instead of allowing all broadcast activity to be concentrated in large metropolitan areas already served by many existing broadcasters.

When dealing with multiple competing US radio station applications, current FM allotment priorities are: (1) first full-time aural service; (2) second full-time aural service; (3) first local aural transmission service; and (4) Other public interest matters.

Similar criteria were extended to competing applicants for non-commercial stations by US legislation passed in 2000.

Suburban community problem

Any policy favoring applicants for communities not already served by an existing station has had the unintended effect of encouraging applicants to merely list a small suburb of a large city, claiming to be the "first station in the community" even though the larger city is well served by many existing stations. "The Suburban Community Problem" was recognized in FCC policy as early as 1965. "Stations in metropolitan areas often tend to seek out national and regional advertisers and to identify themselves with the entire metropolitan area rather than with the particular needs of their specified communities," according to an FCC policy statement of the era. In order "to discourage applicants for smaller communities who would be merely substandard stations for neighboring, larger communities," the FCC established the so-called "Suburban Community presumption" which required applicants for AM stations in such markets to demonstrate that they had ascertained the unmet programming needs of the specific communities and were prepared to satisfy those needs.

By 1969, the same issues had spread to FM licensing; instead of building transmitters in the community to nominally be served, applicants would often seek to locate the tower site at least halfway to the next major city. In one such precedent case (the Berwick Doctrine), the FCC required a hearing before Berwick, a prospective broadcaster, could locate transmitters midway between Pittston, Pennsylvania (the city of license) and a larger audience in Wilkes-Barre.

A related problem was that of 'move-in'. Outlying communities would find their small-town local stations sold to outsiders, who would then attempt to change the community of license to a suburb of the nearest major city, move transmitter locations or remove existing local content from broadcasts in an attempt to "move in" to the larger city.

The small town of Anniston, Alabama, due to its location 90 miles west of Atlanta and 65 miles east of Birmingham, has lost local content from both TV and FM stations which were re-targeted at one of the two larger urban centers or moved outright. (WHMA-FM Anniston is now licensed as WNNX College Park, Georgia - an Atlanta suburb - after a failed attempt to relicense it to Sandy Springs, Georgia - another Atlanta suburb. Transmitters are now in downtown Atlanta.) The same is true for WJSU, which served East Alabama with local news until the station was merged into a triplex to form ABC 33/40 which focuses its coverage on the central part of the state.

A 1988 precedent case (Faye and Richard Tuck, 3 FCC Rcd 5374, 1988) created the "Tuck Analysis" as a standard which attempts to address the Suburban Community Problem on a case-by-case basis by examining:

1. the station’s proposed signal coverage over the urbanized area (the “Coverage Factor”);
2. the relative population size and distance between the suburban community and the urban market (the “Relative Size and Distance Factor”); and
3. the independence of the suburban community, based on various factors that would indicate self-sufficiency (the “Independence Factor”).

Despite the best intentions of regulators, the system remains prone to manipulation.

This has almost become a parlor game. The goal of the game—whether you’re applying for a new station or a station currently licensed to a rural area—is to move as close to a big market as possible. The closer you get to a big market, the more potential listeners you can reach and hence the more advertising dollars you can attract. But there’s a catch—at least there’s supposed to be. The Commission is required by Section 307(b) of the Communications Act “to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service” to “the several States and communities.” The FCC cannot simply permit radio stations to relocate from rural areas to well-served urban markets without violating that mandate. That’s when the game gets interesting. Under our FM allotment rules, the Commission will give a preference to any applicant that proposes to serve a community with no current licensees—i.e., not that the community doesn’t receive radio service (it could receive service from dozens of stations) but that no station lists that particular community as its “community of license.” That’s where a good atlas comes in handy. The next step is to scour the maps to find a community near an urban area that doesn’t yet have any stations licensed to it. You win the game if you get the FCC to grant you a preference for providing “first service” to a close-in suburban community while being able to cover the larger market.

Licensing and on-air identity

While becoming less meaningful over the decades, stations are still required to post a public file somewhere within 25 miles of the city, and to cover the entire city with a local signal. In the United States, a station's transmitter must be located so that it can provide a strong signal over nearly all of its "principal community" (5 mV/m or stronger at night for AM stations, 70 dbuV for FM, 35 dbu for DTV channels 2-6, 43 dbu for channels 7-13 and 48 dbu for channels 14+), even if it primarily serves another city. For example, American television station WTTV primarily serves Indianapolis; however, the transmitter is located farther south than the other stations in that city because it is licensed to Bloomington, 50 miles south of Indianapolis. In some cases, such as Jeannette, Pennsylvania-licensed WPCW 19, the FCC has waived this requirement; the station claimed that retaining an existing transmitter site 25.6 miles southeast of its new community of license of Jeannette would be in compliance with the Commission's minimum distance separation requirements (avoiding interference to co-channel WOIO 19 Shaker Heights). Another extreme example of a station's transmitter located far from the city of license is the FM station KPNT, licensed in the town of Collinsville, IL. The station primarily serves the greater St. Louis, MO area, as well as numerous outlying communities south of St. Louis and near the Illinois border. The station's transmitter is actually located near Hillsboro, MO, about 72 km (45 mi) away from the community of license, Collinsville, IL.

FCC regulations also require stations at least once an hour to state the station's call letters, followed by the city of license. However, the FCC has no restrictions on additional names after the city of license, so many stations afterwards add the nearest large city. For example, American television station WOIO is licensed to Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. It is identified as "WOIO DT Shaker Heights-Cleveland." Similarly, northern New York's WWNY identifies as WWNY-TV 7 Carthage-Watertown as a historical artifact; the original broadcasts originated from Champion Hill in 1954 so the license still reflects this tiny location.

If the station is licensed in the primary city served, on occasion the station will list a second city next to it. For example, American television station WTVT, licensed to Tampa, Florida, its primary city, identifies as "WTVT/WTVT-DT Tampa/St. Petersburg", as St. Petersburg is another major city in the market.

There is no longer a requirement to carry programs relevant to the particular community, or even necessarily to operate or transmit from that community. Accordingly, stations licensed to smaller communities in major metropolitan markets often target programming toward the entire market rather than the official home community, and often move their studio facilities to the larger urban centre as well. For instance, the Canadian radio station CFNY is officially licensed to Brampton, Ontario, although its studio and transmitter facilities are located in downtown Toronto.

This may, at times, lead to confusion — while media directories normally list broadcast stations by their legal community of license, audiences often disregard (or may even be entirely unaware of) the distinction.

Table of allotments

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission maintains a Table of Allotments, which assigns individual channel frequencies to individual cities or communities for both TV and FM radio.

A corresponding Table of Allotments for digital television was created in 1997. To operate a licensed station, a broadcaster must first obtain allocation of the desired frequencies in the FCC's Table of Allotments for the intended city of license. This process is subject to various political and bureaucratic restrictions, based on considerations including the number of existing stations in the area.

The term "city" has in some cases been relaxed to mean "community", often including the unincorporated areas around the city that share a mailing address. This sometimes leads to inconsistencies, such as the licensing of one metro Atlanta station to the unincorporated Cobb County community of Mableton, but the refusal to license another to Sandy Springs, which is one of the largest cities in the state, and was at the time an unincorporated part of Fulton County only for political reasons in the Georgia General Assembly.

The definition of a "community" also comes into play when a broadcaster wants to take a station away from a tiny hamlet like North Pole, New York whose population is in decline. In general, regulators are loath to allow a community's only licence to be moved away - especially to a city which already has a station (a rare few exceptions were made to accommodate the then-fledgling third-rank American Broadcasting Company in the 1950s). A broadcaster may make the case that the "community" functionally no longer exists in order to be released from its local obligations.

Often, the city of license does not correspond to the location of the station itself, of the primary audience or of the communities identified in the station's branding and advertising.

Some of the more common reasons for a community of license to be listed as a point far from the actual audience include:

The "compromise" location

A broadcaster may wish to serve two different communities, both in the same region but far enough from each other that a transmitter in one market would provide poor service to the other. While a transmitter in each community served would be preferable, occasionally a station licensed to a small town between the two larger centres will be used.

The suburban station

In FM radio broadcasting, small local stations were sometimes built to serve suburban or outlying areas in an era where AM radio stations held the largest audiences and much of the FM spectrum lay vacant. In the era of vacuum tubes, the five-tube AM radio with no FM tuning capability and limited audio quality was common; later advances in receiver design were to make good-quality FM commonplace (even though most AM/FM stereo receivers still have severely limited AM frequency response and no AM stereo decoders). Eventually FM spectrum became a very scarce commodity in many markets as AM stations moved to the FM dial, relegating AM largely to talk radio. As cities expanded, former small-town FM stations found themselves not only in what were now becoming rapidly expanding suburbs but also on what was becoming some of the most valuable spectrum in broadcast radio. The once-tiny FM stations would often then be sold, increased (where possible) to much-higher power and used to serve a huge mainstream audience in the larger metropolitan area.

The short-spaced station

To avoid co-channel interference, a minimum distance is maintained between stations operating on the same frequency in different markets. On VHF, full-power stations are typically 175 miles or more apart before the same channel is used again. An otherwise-desirable channel may therefore be unavailable to a community unless either it is operated at greatly reduced-power, forced onto a strongly directional antenna pattern to protect the distant co-channel station or relocated to some other, more distant location in the region to maintain proper spacing. The choice of another community as home for a station can be one possible means to avoid short-spacing, effectively shifting the entire station's coverage area to maintain the required distances between transmitters.

The distant mountaintop antenna

In hilly or mountainous regions, a city would often be built in a waterfront or lakeside location (such as Plattsburgh-Burlington, both on Lake Champlain) - lower ground which in turn would be surrounded by tall mountain peaks. The only reliable means to get the VHF television or radio signals over the mountains was to build a station atop one of the mountain peaks. This occasionally left stations with a distant mountaintop (or its nearest small crossroads) as the historical city of license, even though the audience was elsewhere.

The relocation of an existing station

Often, a license for a new station will not be available in a community, either because a regulatory agency was only willing to accept new applications within specified narrow timeframes or because there are no suitable vacant channels. A prospective broadcaster must therefore buy an existing station as the only way to readily enter the market, in some cases being left with a station in a suburban, outlying or adjacent-market area if that were the only facility available for sale.

The border blaster

Occasionally, a community on an international border is served using a station licensed to another country. This may provide access to less restrictive broadcast regulation or represent a means to use local marketing agreements or adjacent-market licences to circumvent limits on the number of stations under common ownership.

The last-available frequency allocation

In the early days of television, the majority of stations could be found on the VHF band; in North America, this currently represents just twelve possible channels and in large markets any suitable allocations in this range were mostly full by the early 1950s. Occasionally, a prospective broadcaster could obtain one of these coveted positions by acquiring an existing station or permit in an adjacent community - although in some cases this meant a move out-of-state.

The use of an adjacent market

Occasionally, a station owner would reach a legal limit on concentration of media ownership, already having the maximum number of commonly owned stations in a market. Additional stations would be possible by transmitting the extra signals from a station technically in an adjacent market.

The arbitrary nominal location

In some cases, stations were constructed or acquired with the express purpose of driving a regional or province-wide chain of full-power repeaters. Which of these "satellite stations" would be designated as the main signal could be an arbitrary choice, as the programming carried on all stations in the system would be identical.

A station may also be moved for political reasons. CHSJ-TV was originally a private CBC-TV affiliate in Saint John, New Brunswick. The station was purchased by the network, a federally subsidised public broadcaster, and its license moved to the provincial capital Fredericton in 2011 as CBAT. CBC-TV abandoned its over-the-air Saint John viewers entirely at the end of digital television transition, as the analogue transmitter in Saint John was shut down in 2012 and the digital signal is only available in Fredericton.