On June 8, 1988, an
International Telecommunication Union-sponsored conference held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil adopted provisions, effective July 1, 1990, to extend the upper end of Region 2's AM broadcast band, by adding ten frequencies which spanned from 1610 kHz to 1700 kHz. The agreement provided for a standard transmitter power of 1 kilowatt, which could be increased to 10 kilowatts in cases where it did not result in undue interference. The president of
WJDM in Elizabeth City, New Jersey, John R. Quinn, was frustrated that this station was limited to daytime-only operation, and required to sign-off at night, because it was located within protected nighttime coverage area of a
Class I "clear channel" station,
WCKY in Cincinnati, Ohio. In additon, there were no unused fulltime assignments available on the AM and FM bands in the congested New York City region. Quinn saw the pending band extension as an opportunity for WJDM to move to a new frequency allowing fulltime operation, and arranged for congressional representative
Matthew J. Rinaldo to introduce legislation that added a carefully worded provision to the
Communications Act of 1934 in late 1991, mandating that "It shall be the policy of the
Federal Communications Commission, in any case in which the licensee of an existing AM daytime-only station located in a community with a population of more than 100,000 persons that lacks a local full-time aural station licensed to that community and that is located within a Class I station primary service area notifies the Commission that such licensee seeks to provide full-time service". This addition successfully advanced WJDM's status, and on December 8, 1995 the station began broadcasting on the additional frequency of 1660 kHz, as the country's first with regular broadcasting on the expanded band. The wording inserted into the Communications Act was broad enough to qualify a second station,
KXBT on 1190 kHz in Vallejo, California, for an expediated assignment, which debuted at 1640 kHz on March 19, 1996. In the United States, the normal
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) practice for station applications on the standard AM band frequencies had been to individually process requests. For the expanded band, the Commission decided to allocate the rest of the band at once on a nationwide basis, after evaluating all of the stations which notified the FCC that they were interested in moving to the new band. In the fall of 1994, the FCC announced that, out of 688 applicants, a specially designed computer program (which took two weeks to run) had chosen 79 stations to make the transfer to the expanded band. However, a year later the Commission rescinded these assignments, after it was determined that there had been major flaws in the data used to evaluate the applications. On March 22, 1996, the FCC announced a revised allocation table, consisting of 87 stations, but this too was eventually withdrawn due to errors. The FCC's third, and final, allocation was announced on March 17, 1997, and provided for 88 assignments. In most cases the expanded band operations, despite being modifications to existing stations, were licensed as new stations, separately from the original standard band station. With only one exception, only stations included in the March 17, 1997 list have been permitted to operate on an expanded band frequency. The sole exception occurred in 2006, when the FCC granted a waiver giving permission for
WRCR in Ramapo, New York to move from 1300 to 1700 kHz. The FCC originally assumed that the expanded band stations would simulcast the programming of the original standard band stations, and be licensed to the same community. However, in most cases the expanded band stations have run separate programming, and a few have moved to other communities as much as 450 kilometers (280 miles) away. One policy the FCC has generally enforced is that paired original and expanded band stations must remain under common ownership. In order to allow for an orderly transition period, the FCC initially provided that both the original station and its expanded band counterpart could optionally operate simultaneously for up to five years, after which owners would have to turn in one of the two licenses, depending on whether they preferred the new assignment or elected to remain on the original frequency. ==Table of March 17, 1997 assignments==