The FCC has decided to allow future commercial use on four FM frequencies in Iowa and two in Wisconsin that had previously been reserved for non-commercial use.
The vacant allotments that will likely go up for auction include:
Asbury, Iowa: 98.7 class A (6kW/100m). Canton (Ill.) Seventh-Day Adventist Church once had an unbuilt construction permit for this frequency, which would rimshot Dubuque.
Keosauqua, Iowa: 102.1 class C3 (25kW/100m). Fairfield Youth Advocacy once had a construction permit for this frequency but did not build it.
Moville, Iowa: 97.1 class A (6kW/100m). Iowa Public Radio once had an unbuilt construction permit for this frequency, which would rimshot Sioux City.
Rudd, Iowa: 101.5 class A (6kW/100m). Extreme Grace Media once had an unbuilt construction permit for this Mason City rimshot.
Ashland, Wis: 102.9 class A (6kW/100m). Wisconsin Public Radio first petitioned to allot this frequency but didn’t need it when it found a frequency in the reserved band instead. Northland College later had a construction permit for a new station which was never built.
Hayward, Wis: 94.3 class C2 (50kW/150m). A commercial broadcaster first proposed this allotment decades ago and it was later reserved for non-commercial use. The FCC accepted applications for this frequency in 2010 but the only application was dismissed due to deficiencies. (This paragraph was corrected in 2026 to reflect that a construction permit was not issued.)
The FCC Order did not say exactly why it decided to remove the non-commercial reserved status from these allotments, writing that the “changes are merely a ministerial action that are necessary to reflect that these FM commercial allotments are no longer reserved for NCE use by operation of law.”
The Commission did not say when the allotments might go up for auction.
Allotments in the commercial portion of the band (92-108 MHz) are sometimes reserved for non-commercial use, while the reserved band (88-92 MHz) is only used for non-commercial stations in the U.S.