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FCC Numbers Reflect Growth of FM Over Two Decades
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There are 4,085 more FM stations are on the air in
the United States than there were 20 years ago, a growth in licenses of 64%
since 1992; and that’s not even including the
explosive growth in translators in that time, nor the many hundreds of
low-power
stations that hold licenses (a category that’s about to grow
further).
That is one conclusion to be drawn from a comparison of FCC
licensing data. The commission Friday issued its latest tally of licenses, as
of the end of December 2012; those numbers are shown in the first column below.
We dug out comparative data from 10 and 20 years ago,
and the resulting columns reflect overarching trends in our business. (Our data
in the first paragraph are reached by taking the totals of FM commercial and FM
educational, and combining them.)
The data tell us little about trends in the number of
owners, since many licenses are
held by the same entities, as has been well documented over time. But
evident here are not only big growth in the number of commercial and
educational FM outlets at the end of the 20th century and opening of the 21st,
but also a flat or slowly declining base of AM
licenses, and the big spike in translators. The numbers for LPFMs and
translators will be going up again soon, now that the FCC has issued rules to
expand the low-power service and unclog the big backlog in more translator
applications.
Percentages are rounded; all numbers are based on FCC data as of the end of the
given year.
| CATEGORY
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2012 |
2002 |
1992 |
%
SINCE '92 |
| AM
STATIONS |
4,738 |
4,804 |
4,961 |
(-4%) |
| FM
COMMERCIAL |
6,598 |
6,173 |
4,785 |
+38% |
| FM
EDUCATIONAL |
3,860 |
2,354 |
1,588 |
+143% |
| TOTAL |
15,196 |
13,331 |
11,334 |
+34% |
| |
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| FM
TRANSLATORS/BOOSTERS |
6,075 |
3,825 |
1,954 |
+211% |
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| LOW-POWER
FM |
809 |
0 |
0 |
~ |
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