City of license Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! == 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 ower among the several States and communities as to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service to each of the same."<ref>Text as amended, {{USCode|47|307(b)}}.</ref> 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."<ref>{{CodeFedReg|47|73|1120}}</ref> 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 a [[field strength]] of at least 3.16 [[millivolt]]s per meter (mV/m) over the entire land area of the community,<ref>{{CodeFedReg|47|73|315}} paragraph (a). Retrieved 2010-04-07.</ref> whereas [[non-commercial educational]] FM stations need only provide a field strength of 1 mV/m over 50% of the community's population.<ref>{{CodeFedReg|47|73|515}}. Retrieved 2010-04-07.</ref> 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 [[North American call sign|call sign]] and community, at sign-on, sign-off, and at the top of every hour of operation.<ref>{{CodeFedReg|47|73|1201}}. Retrieved 2010-04-08.</ref> Other current requirements include providing a local telephone number in the community's calling area (or else a toll-free number).<ref>{{CodeFedReg|47|73|1125}}(e). Retrieved 2010-04-08.</ref> The former requirement to (in most cases) maintain an official main studio within 25 miles of the community's geographic center was discontinued in December 2017 when the regulation was amended. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page