On April 5, 2007, the FCC has granted a construction permit to Tri-City Community Broadcasting with a community of license of Morgan, LA (Facility ID 123824). The applicant recently filed an amendment to their application to move the transmitter location to the southwest and change the channel to eliminate a third adjacent channel short spacing with WCKW-FM in Laplace, LA (Facility ID 117).

The new LPFM station is predicted to cover the Louisiana communities of Patterson, Bayou Vista, Berwick and Morgan City.

This is the final LPFM construction permit to be issued in the state of Louisiana. It took 6 and a half years for this construction permit to be issued.

REC is deeply concerned about the full Commission's decision this week to proceed with the full implementation with the IBiquity in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital audio broadcasting (DAB) system. We are mainly concerned about information in the FCC press release that suggests that nighttime AM operation will be authorized. Not only will this create problems to the rural nighttime AM service in many areas of the country but it will give the NAB more leverage to push for FM translators to be used for AM stations, especially those that have now been obliterated by adjacent channel out of town stations with a digital signal. This will bring more translators on the air thus preventing the growth of the LPFM service.

Recently, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) issued the significantly higher new royalty rates for Internet radio for the 2006-2010 period. The ruling ignored webcasting community proposals and set out the SoundExchange proposed "per performance" rates (below) and a $500 minimum fee per channel per year.

For us, since we broadcast through Live365, this could mean that the future of Hardcore J and Hardcore XTRA are in jeopardy. The rates that are being proposed as driven by the recording industry will most likely put Live365 as well as many independent webcasters out of business leaving the market only open to the big names.

We have received word today that Dean Spratt, host of W0KIE's "Thursday Night Potpourri" has passed away due to a relapse from a massive stroke he suffered last week, he was 54.

Dean has had a long involvement in TVRO radio as well as a professional career including doing traffic at one time for WCCO, Minneapolis, MN. Dean, who was blind, did his traffic broadcasts from his home using a leased line.

Spratt's death is the second one in the W0KIE family in the past 6 months. In early October, Dishnut Gerry passed on after a long term illness.

REC extends our condolences to Dean's family as well as to Dean's family on W0KIE.

The FCC has issued a press release announcing that the Morse Code proficiency test is no longer required to obtain an Amateur Radio license at any class. In the past, only the Technician class license was available without the code. The change will take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.

In the past, REC has taken a "slow code" approach where the 5WPM code would still be endorsed for the Amateur Extra class license.