on this day the new head of the FCC issued a directive to his staff that no new TV broadcast licenses would be issued in the VHF portion of the radio spectrum.

This covered TV station 2-13 in three separate portions of the band. Existing TV licenses would continue indefinitely on these frequencies but no new licenses would be issued and existing stations would be encouraged to migrate to the UHF frequencies of the band. As a second new rule FM radio stations would be permitted to broadcast on the same three VHS frequency ranges as the TV stations 2-13 wherever such stations would not conflict with existing TV stations. The new frequencies would be redefined as FM low (TV frequencies for 2-4), Extended FM (TV frequencies 5-6) and FM High (TV frequencies for 7-13). Each TV station takes up as much band width as 30 commercial FM stations so this rule change could have been seen as a purely money making scheme for the FCC, 360 radio stations would fill the new FM roster in place of the 12 TV stations. Japan was able to ship new FM radio's with the Extended FM frequencies immediately as those used for TV 5 & 6 in the USA were already used for commercial radio in Japan. Adding the Low and High FM bands to transistor radio's was a simple design change and new multi band radio's were on the market for Christmas 1981.

The quadrupling of the FM radio frequencies by the Reagan Administration was the last straw in commercial AM broadcasting, with all the new slots available nobody was really interested in commercialy broadcasting AM signals in the band formerly reserved for that technology. In 1983 the AM band was formally declared an Amateur radio band and commercial traffic was no longer allowed, only low power privately held radios were licensed to use it. The Powerhouse AM stations like WJR Detroit and WGN Chicago gladly moved their broadcasts to the new Low FM band where AM stations had right of transfer under the 1983 regulations of the FCC. The Low FM band became the home of News/Talk Radio and NPR became the biggest owner of stations in that band. By the time of the September 11, 2001 attack's on the USA only a few TV stations still held licenses in the three FM bands and when the digital conversion took place in 2009 none were allowed to remain in the VHS spectrum. Commercial FM was far too big of a money maker for the FCC to be interfered with by the last three VHS stations in New York, Detroit and Saint Louis, they were required to move to the UHF band and the era of VHS TV ended at the time of the Digital Transition.