New FM Booster Local Program Origination Rules Effective January 13th

The FCC announced that the new FM Booster local program origination rules adopted in November 2024 will take effect January 13, 2025.  The new rules allow FM boosters to originate three minutes of each hour to programming different from the content of the primary station they are retransmitting.  Designed to hyper-localize content for groups of primary station listeners, the new opportunity is a change to how FM boosters have historically been solely used to rebroadcast signals to areas with poor reception of the primary station’s signal.

Certain technical advances now enable FM boosters to customize content within station service areas, even though they operate on the same frequency as the primary station.  While temporary experimental use of FM boosters for local content has been allowed since April 2024, the FCC’s Order makes the processing, licensing and service rules permanent.

Applications for new FM boosters will continue to be processed on a first come, first-served basis, whether they are filed for the traditional “fill-in” purpose or simply to establish a new signal within an area in order to localize content.  For existing FM boosters, or for any new FM booster, a local program origination notification will have to be filed with the FCC at least 15 days before local origination can begin. Some of the modified rules requiring new or modified information collection requirements won’t be effective until OMB approval.