By this I mean a commercial produced for the local market only, and excluding the station's own promos (although I have yet to see those in HD). Anyway, I think I saw my first one tonight -- an ad for University of Maryland University College (yes, they really call it that), during WUSA's 5 pm news.

Anyone else?

WEWS in Cleveland has been doing a good job with HD commercials. I've seen a few spots for local businesses shown in HD or 16:9 since the beginning of May. Also, all news promos are in HD at all hours of the day. SD content in the promos have sidebars that say "TONIGHT" or the day of the week on the left side of the screen and "WEWS HD" on the right side of the screen. ABC network promos outside of primetime and syndicated programming ads have "WEWS HD" sidebars on both sides of the screen.

WKYC in Cleveland has been doing HD commercials a little longer. Only this year I've started seeing a few local ads in HD(it was for a car dealer). But since at least 2008 they have had ads for Target and others in HD during newscasts. Local news talent promos are in HD as well as some other promotional ads, however the "Tonight at 11" ads are still SD. They're not doing as well as WEWS.

WVIR NBC 29 in Charlottesville, VA, has been doing local commercials in HD since they transitioned to local news in HD. All of their promos are also in HD, as are field reports. Their weather overlay/ticker was HD compatible, as was (predictably) 2008 election results.

Prestige Imports has been running locally-produced commercials in HD on Denver's KUSA for a few years now.

WXYZ in Detroit has been running a smattering of local HD spots for a while now.

By this I mean a commercial produced for the local market only, and excluding the station's own promos (although I have yet to see those in HD). Anyway, I think I saw my first one tonight -- an ad for University of Maryland University College (yes, they really call it that), during WUSA's 5 pm news.

Anyone else?

WUSA is owned by Gannett, who also owns WKYC. I'm surprised that they are not doing HD promos. WKYC has done several good ones recently, for the news and weather departments.

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WBAL (Hearst) and WBFF (Sinclair) have local HD commercials and news promos.

I don't get this.

When we made the switch from black and white to color, the commercials used the new technology before many of the programs did. It made sense: of course the advertisers wanted their stuff to look as good as possible, even if many viewers didn't have color TVs yet.

So why would any advertiser not use HD right now? That's what I don't get.

So why would any advertiser not use HD right now? That's what I don't get.
As far as local commercials go, the vast majority of stations are not equipped to handle HD commercials.

I don't get this.

When we made the switch from black and white to color, the commercials used the new technology before many of the programs did. It made sense: of course the advertisers wanted their stuff to look as good as possible, even if many viewers didn't have color TVs yet.

So why would any advertiser not use HD right now? That's what I don't get.

If nearly all advertising volume was still flowing through the same three broadcasters as it was back then, I suspect all ads (and television programs) would've been in HD years ago.

As far as local commercials go, the vast majority of stations are not equipped to handle HD commercials.

My local CBS/UPN stations(same owner) cannot handle HD outside of network or local news. No syndication, so commercials are definitely out of the question.

The local FOX station was the first station with HD News yet promos are still SD and no HD commercials. Just this year they finally started HD syndication with Seinfeld only.

For HD, I'm still limited to the three networks (or three and a half if you count Fox :) ) and a few local channels, just like the old days.

Since HD is still relatively new and exciting to me, I'd be much more likely to watch local programs and even watch the local commercials if they would broadcast them in HD. But if they cling to SD, then I have a much bigger selection of SD content on SD cable.

They have to upgrade eventually. Why don't the advertisers force them to do it sooner? They're losing me, and there must be others like me.

Although I consider SD to be adequate for most programs, I still can't accept SD commercials in an HD program, because when I see SD and HD together the SD looks like youtube quality.

Of the 8 local stations we have here in Jacksonville, only 1, Independent WXJT does the news and syndicated shows in HD. No locally produced commercials. As for the other 7 stations.....

KTSM has been showing commercials in HD since about June 2008. They even did a commercial in HD to advertise their News, before they upgraded to HD News.

WMBF has been doing HD commercials since the very beginning. They launched on 8/8/08.