Overall, J1 listening statistics for January have been fairly steady over December. Overall total listening hours (TLH) fell short of the 30-day November period but was an increase over December. In January, J1 did see an increase in VIP listening and simultaneous VIP counts have been seen as high as 7 during the course of the month.

01/11 5AM Update: REC's "sub-domains" used for the broadcast database server have been restored. It may take time for the information to propagate through the internet but should be up in the next 24 hours if it isn't up already.

This started late last week when our domain name server (DNS) provider ZoneEdit had a failure of their primary and secondary nameservers. This left REC as well as many other ZoneEdit users out in the cold.

We attempted to move our DNS to our hosting provider HostGator. (our use of ZoneEdit for DNS predates our use of HostGator by several years)

In 2009, REC celebrated its 25th anniversary. On July 20, 1984 from what started as a simple phone line called "California Comments" has developed and changed over the past quarter century.

Today, the US House of Representatives passes the Local Community Radio Act.

The vote, which was supposed to take place on Tuesday, was delayed until Wednesday due to a lack of a quorum, a significant number of representatives to vote on the measure.

During the debate on the measure, Lee Terry (R-NE) recognizes the MITRE study and the fact that LPFM stations operating on third adjacent channels will not interfere with full power FM stations. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) explain the benefits of LPFM stations to women, minorities and local musicians.

Over the past few years, REC has helped provide data and support to those organizations who were involved in pushing this legislation through.

The FCC has set up a filing window from February 19 through February 26, 2010. This has been rescheduled from this December.

This window is restricted to locations that are on the Table of Allotments that have been reserved as non-commercial educational.

In 2003, the FCC opened a window to permit proponents to petition that a certain vacant non-reserved band allotment should be moved from commercial to non-commercial use.

In order to reserve a channel as non-commercial, the proponent must make a showing that there are no reserved band (88-92) channels could be used without interference to foreign broadcast stations or TV channel 6 stations.

There is also a third test where an allotment would be possible if the allotment would provide the first or second non-commercial educational (NCE) radio service to at least 10% of the population within the 60 dBu service contour of the proposed allotment and that population is at least 2,000 persons.

There are a few things you need to know about this window: