i3G Media Makes Its Case For FCC Waiver. | Story

A North Dakota radio deal is putting the FCC’s local ownership rules to a rural America test, as the Ingstad family’s i3G Media argues a decades-old market formula fails to capture how listeners, signals and advertising dollars actually move across the wide-open spaces of the Great Plains.

The Ingstad family’s i3G Media is seeking FCC approval to buy hot AC “Mix 93.3” KSJZ, classic country KSJB (600) and translator K261FC at 100.1 FM in Jamestown, ND for in a $400,000 deal with Chesterman Communications. But completing the transaction will require the Commission to grant a waiver of its local radio ownership rule because i3G already owns stations whose signals overlap the Jamestown properties.

Rather than simply asking the FCC to overlook the ownership cap, i3G is challenging how the Commission calculates the size of unrated radio markets in the first place. In unrated markets, the FCC uses a contour-overlap methodology that generally counts competing stations only when their transmitter sites are no more than 92 kilometers — about 57 miles — from the perimeter of the relevant overlap area. But i3G says that cutoff produces an artificially small Jamestown market by excluding stations that reach the area, attract listeners there and compete for the same advertising dollars.

“The 92-kilometer methodology does not take into consideration these anomalies,” i3G tells the Commission, pointing to characteristics that make broadcasting in North Dakota different from many other parts of the country. The company says the state’s unusually high ground conductivity gives AM stations much larger service areas, while its flat terrain and elevated tower sites allow FM signals to regularly travel beyond their predicted 70 dBu contours. It says North Dakota is known for having some of the largest geographic radio service areas in the nation.

That means a transmitter may sit outside the FCC’s 92-kilometer line while its station remains a very real competitor in Jamestown. “Signal propagation, and the economic behavior it produces, does not respect an administrative line drawn at exactly 92 kilometers,” the waiver request says.

The company wants the FCC to count an additional 10 FM and 12 AM stations whose transmitters fall outside that boundary. It says those stations nevertheless put usable signals into the area, compete for Jamestown listeners, and sell advertising to businesses in and around the community.

“These are not speculative or theoretical competitors,” the company says. “They are stations with which petitioner and other area broadcasters compete every day for the same finite pool of local advertising dollars.” The company argues that counting the stations that actually compete in Jamestown would more accurately measure the market and allow the acquisition under the applicable ownership tier.

The waiver request also turns the deal into something of a referendum on whether a methodology adopted in 2003 still makes sense in today’s audio business. i3G points to competition from podcasts, streaming audio, satellite radio, social media and other digital platforms, while noting that streaming has made the physical location of a radio transmitter less important to whether a station can reach listeners and advertisers.

But the company’s argument is also rooted in the economics of keeping small market radio operating as i3G says KSJB and KSJZ have struggled financially since 2020. According to the waiver filing, a business that once generated $300,000 to $400,000 annually has averaged only $70,000 during the past three years, while staffing has fallen from 13 full-time employees to four. Chesterman hired a broker to find a buyer, and i3G says that after four months on the market it was the only interested party. The company argues that allowing the combination would provide economies of scale needed to reinforce both Jamestown stations and preserve their local news, sports and community programming. It likens the situation to the public-interest reasoning behind the FCC’s failed and failing station policies, even though those standards were developed primarily for television.

There is also a family legacy behind the proposed consolidation. The “i3G” name stands for “Ingstad 3rd Generation,” reflecting the third generation of the Ingstad family in local broadcasting. And another is already waiting in the wings. The filing says members of the fourth generation are now working at i3G stations and learning the radio business. For now, the company is owned by Tallie Colville, Todd Ingstad, Stacy Ingstad and Reagan Ingstad and currently owns seven FMs and six AMs in North Dakota and Minnesota, all in unrated markets.

If approved, the deal would end Chesterman Communications’ radio ownership.