Scott Fybush said:The trouble, I think, with petitioning the FCC to make FMeXtra a public broadcast service is that you can't really easily have it both ways. Make it public and you're now obligated to maintain program logs and EAS and do legal IDs...and then what happens when ASCAP and BMI and SESAC come around for their money, too? Kind of defeats a lot of what they were originally marketing FMeXtra to do, doesn't it?
Paying royalties wasn't the issue. Using an AM station to feed the translators requires paying ASCAP, BMI and SESAC too, so that is really a wash. I was simply looking for a way to program the translators separately in order to super-serve the communities they were located in. Technically ,FMeXtra would have worked, but it wouldn't have been legal to do so.
I actually tried FMeXtra on a 74 watt LPFM. It worked amazingly well. It is too bad this technology has gone the way of the 8-Track tape player.