kenglish
04-23-07, 06:12 PM
(Hopefully, the mods will stickie this)
For those of you who have asked "How do I find the status of my Low-Power and Translator stations?", here's a way to do it:
1. Go to the main FCC (home) webpage:
http://www.fcc.gov/
and then click on "Search" at the top, or go directly to their "Search" page:
http://www.fcc.gov/searchtools.html
2. On the left side, under "Special Purpose Tools", click on "TV Station Query".
This will take you to a page called "TVQ TV Database Query".
Now, you need to fill in some blanks.
3. The easiest thing to do is, use the pull-down and click on your state, rather than trying to identify the nearest cities. You might want to do this again for any adjacent state, if you live near a border.
4. Leave the "Search for TV Stations in a Channel Range" setting at default, if you want.
5. Under the "Services" pull-down, select "Digital Low Power Television (LD)".
6. Under "Record Types", if you are going to sort these (using MS Excel), just select "All Records". This will give you a list of every LD application, permit and license.
7. Now, the magic....Under "Output", select "Text File (pipe delimited/ no links)".
8. Next, click on "Submit Data".
You will receive a text file of all the FCC data on LD stations in the area you selected.
9. Save this file, as a text file, to your computer. Then, open a new MS Excel spreadsheet file.
10. In MS Excel, under "Data", select "Import External Data", then "Import Data", and specify the location where you stored the text file. When the "Text Import Wizard" comes up, you can pretty much click "next", "next", "finish" and "OK". The data will then populate the spreadsheet.
11. Save the MS Excel spreadsheet.
12. The data will initially be shown in channel number order. You can now sort the data, in the normal fashion, by highlighting a column (such as the city, the owner, etc), then clicking on "Data", then "sort", then continuing through as you normally would on a spreadsheet. This let's you peruse the info in any way you'd like.
I usually try to sort by "APP" (applications pending), then by "CP" (Construction Permits that are approved, and may indicate that construction is pending, or underway), then by "LIC" (Licensed, and probably on the air).
You can even keep these saved on your computer, under different names/date file names, and see the progress from week to week. If you don't re-save the file after sorting, you can always manipulate them again, to sort by transmitter lat/long, by city, owner, power levels, etc.
For a key to the abbreviations (by showing the results as an HTML page), or to use the links that send you to other station data, do the first six steps, but leave the "output" set to the default function, then look around on the site.
For those of you who have asked "How do I find the status of my Low-Power and Translator stations?", here's a way to do it:
1. Go to the main FCC (home) webpage:
http://www.fcc.gov/
and then click on "Search" at the top, or go directly to their "Search" page:
http://www.fcc.gov/searchtools.html
2. On the left side, under "Special Purpose Tools", click on "TV Station Query".
This will take you to a page called "TVQ TV Database Query".
Now, you need to fill in some blanks.
3. The easiest thing to do is, use the pull-down and click on your state, rather than trying to identify the nearest cities. You might want to do this again for any adjacent state, if you live near a border.
4. Leave the "Search for TV Stations in a Channel Range" setting at default, if you want.
5. Under the "Services" pull-down, select "Digital Low Power Television (LD)".
6. Under "Record Types", if you are going to sort these (using MS Excel), just select "All Records". This will give you a list of every LD application, permit and license.
7. Now, the magic....Under "Output", select "Text File (pipe delimited/ no links)".
8. Next, click on "Submit Data".
You will receive a text file of all the FCC data on LD stations in the area you selected.
9. Save this file, as a text file, to your computer. Then, open a new MS Excel spreadsheet file.
10. In MS Excel, under "Data", select "Import External Data", then "Import Data", and specify the location where you stored the text file. When the "Text Import Wizard" comes up, you can pretty much click "next", "next", "finish" and "OK". The data will then populate the spreadsheet.
11. Save the MS Excel spreadsheet.
12. The data will initially be shown in channel number order. You can now sort the data, in the normal fashion, by highlighting a column (such as the city, the owner, etc), then clicking on "Data", then "sort", then continuing through as you normally would on a spreadsheet. This let's you peruse the info in any way you'd like.
I usually try to sort by "APP" (applications pending), then by "CP" (Construction Permits that are approved, and may indicate that construction is pending, or underway), then by "LIC" (Licensed, and probably on the air).
You can even keep these saved on your computer, under different names/date file names, and see the progress from week to week. If you don't re-save the file after sorting, you can always manipulate them again, to sort by transmitter lat/long, by city, owner, power levels, etc.
For a key to the abbreviations (by showing the results as an HTML page), or to use the links that send you to other station data, do the first six steps, but leave the "output" set to the default function, then look around on the site.