Des Moines, IA - HDTV - Page 17

Hi all,
What is the base cost for the HD-TV package from mediacom??? Meaning with out the HBO or Showtime HD. What is the price with Hbo and Showtime HD??

Thanks,
Ron ....to bad I have 6 more months with direct tv...

I really just don't care about WOI anymore. Maybe by this fall I will, but I very rarely watch anything on it. Over the weekend, I did watch the Anaheim-Minnesota NHL playoff game. It went into double overtime. The game was around 4 hours long. That's when WOI decided they needed to do a weather update and missed the game winning goal. How difficult would it have been to put up a little window with the game in it at the bottom? Frankly I wasn't surprised though. It's the kind of terrible service I've come to expect from them.

FireShoes - I agree completely about WOI. The ONLY reason I care is because of ALIAS and MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL. (They axed MIRACLES which was the only other great show.) I would be so happy if Disney would sell the rights to both Alias and MNF to a better network. I know WOI was granted yet ANOTHER CP extension until Oct 16th 2003 even though they have all their equipment up and ready. It's such bullsh*t.

I wouldn't sweat it Ron. I'd much rather have service through Directv but I don't have a southern exposure. Directv has HBO and Showtime, plus HDNet and the HD PPV channel and more are definitely on the way.

The HD box rental through Mediacom is $3 more per month. Not sure what the cost of adding HBO and Showtime is, as I have a package with cable modem.

I have a cable modem also, so I would save 10.00 if I went with Mediacom. Also, that way, I won't have to pay 300-400 for a hdtv directtv receiver. How much is it for you with the cable modem and the hdtv package??

I think he said it was $123 but I'm not sure.

Just spoke with Marshall Porter (GM) at WOI. He says that they expect their DT Channel 59 to be OTA within *TWO (2) WEEKS*. He also confirmed my fears that they would be 480i 4:3 ONLY and would not speculate on a time frame for equipment conversion to 720p 16:9. He did mention that since Channel 59 is temporary spectrum and the FCC plans on reallocating ALL DTV to lower UHF and VHF, he doesn't want to spend money on HD equipment until they get their permanent channel assignment. According to him, HD (720p) equipment is only good for ONE FREQUENCY and when they move to a lower channel eventually, that equipment will be rendered useless again. Take that for what its worth. Either way, it means you can forget about HD for Alias or MNF this fall, unless you plan on moving to a state that is not perpetually stuck in the 20th Century.

If that's the case I'm ready to resurrect the advertiser's boycott discussion. The only way to get WOI to move appears to be a direct attack on the revenue stream. Once their DT transmitter is running there is nothing the FCC can do because there is no requirement to transmit HD, just DT.

I sent Mr. Porter an email Monday or Tuesday basically telling him he was doing a horrible job and I never watch WOI anymore, but I will when they start getting a real signal.

I truely hope that the FCC's next step after getting all stations on DIGITAL is to require all NEW content as HD from the networks ... then require HD from the local broadcasts eventually too (local news). Otherwise, these cheapskates will NEVER get off their asses and will always do the bare minimum. Slackers.

From IPTV (KDIN) ...
At the present time, we are planning to be on the air for normal broadcasting by July 1st of this year. I am not aware of what the content will be, but I am sure that part of it will be high definition material.
John Stone
IPTV Engineering

TitanTV officially changed WOI-DT's estimated OTA date to May 31st, 2003. But I think Weird Al Yankovic's UHF-62 is better positioned to get there first.

MTMDSM - They get their information the same way you and I do ... the old fashioned way ... they call the station. Actually, I noticed in the past that they were inaccurate with our market too, so I started contacting Christie M at TitanTV every time I was aware of a ETA change. In fact, I most recently told her about my conversation with the Station Manager (Marshall Porter) regarding 2 more weeks. The next day, the TitanTV website was changed to 5/31/03.

You know ... even with funding problems, IPTV has a responsibility to the tax-paying public and to those of us that donate money year after year to at LEAST turn their DT channel 50 on during prime time (at low power) to pass HD & SD widescreen content from PBS. I don't know if I will donate ever again to them if they keep this up.

Eyedox, I agree with you regarding IPTV. We are missing out on some great national PBS feed material in HD. even a few hours a night (ie: Nature, Nova).

What are we doing about ABC? Is there any consensus here? Would a politely worded nastygram to ABC HQ help? WOI is rapidly alienating the few viewers ABC has left locally. As I have said before, the only program I care at all about is Monday Night Football, a few months out. When I watch local programming, WOI is my absolute last choice. I would probably log on the net rather than sit through their newscast.

WOI will continue to put this off until someone puts their feet to the fire.

I think the best thing you can do is to inform businesses that advertise on WOI that they will lose your business. Tell them that until WOI gets their act together regarding DTV/HDTV you will boycott any advertiser on that channel. Make sure you let WOI know you are taking this action as well.

They are far more likely to respond if advertisers lose potential customers and call and tell them to get off their asses. WOI doesnt give a crap if they dont have a DTV channel because it doesnt count in the ratings. The ONLY way to make them care is to do it through their main revenue stream (advertisers).

I agree ... you have to hit them in the ONLY place it matters to them ... their pocketbooks. I DO think that you should send multiple emails to the ABC network regarding your feelings on how poorly you feel the local affiliate is being run, and that you are no longer watching their network because of it.

I also agree that a boycott of local advertisers is the only way to get WOI's attention. However, I don't think individual letters will have as much effect as one from an organization. I suggest we form a Central Iowa Home Theater Association and get together once in a while to see each other's systems and talk about new developments. The first order of business would be the WOI advertiser boycott. I would be willing to host the first meeting. If you're interested, post here and send me an e-mail - DavidLevy@AbbeyRoadHT.com

Certainly an advertiser boycott is one way to go with WOI. Along the same line, I would like to see something similar to the Satellite rule when you can't get network over the air.

If the local network isn't transmitting an HD signal, we should have the right to get a national satellite feed in HD. That's like a boycott, but with some extra teeth.

An advertiser boycott will do nothing. There is just not enough people interested in HDTV at the moment. I mean, if you don't like the station, don't watch it.

I sent an email to Marshall Porter, basically telling him I think WOI is a crappy station. This is what I sent:

Why haven't you started to broadcast your digital signal? Many people are saying that you are simply STALLING. Please refer to this thread where many people are constantly bashing your station, saying things like:

"I will report them and file complaints with the FCC. The people of Des Moines deserve MUCH better than this. Iowa State should have NEVER sold WOI to a greedy commercial entity."

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&pagenumber=23

I myself do not have an HDTV, but have been doing some research. It seems 1/2 the stations here in Iowa are dragging their feet about this, and the other half are anxious to embraces this new type of TV. You appear to be in the first group. Because of the lack of support of HDTV, I have decided NOT to buy a set.

You must realize that you must support the format before many people will buy it. It does not work the other way around, I wonder if this is understood by your company.

In addition, I have been unable to watch ANYTHING on your station. I have been waiting patiently for your station to be included in the Dish Network Locals.

What is the deal with this? All the other main stations are covered. I hear you are in contract negotiations? Do you think you are more special than the CBS and NBC stations here? They seemed to have no problems being included in Dish.

Anyways, you are only hurting yourself. I am actually perfectly fine with not watching your station, as it seems the only thing you are concerned with is saving the most money and getting the most money. I mean FOX got their digital signal up before you! That should be a slap in the face. I'm not going to tell you what to do, frankly, because I do not care. At first I missed ABC, but not much anymore. I just thought maybe I'll shoot you guys a heads-up. There just isn't one person in Iowa with an HDTV set, there are many.

In addition, there are MANY of us WAITING for WOI to come on to Dish Network.

In the end, I expect you to ignore this email, making fun of me, not realizing that you are ignoring the people you are here to serve. From what I have heard and seen, it seems like WOI is ran by a backwards company that ignores its customer's requests.


And He mailed me back this:

Dear Jack,

I almost did not bother to return your email, due to the lack of Professionalism displayed by your comments. Frankly, a response is not even warranted and you are right, most people would ignore your message and "make fun of you".

With your comments and your apparent distaste of WOI and ABC programming, I am mildly amused at how much rhetoric you decided to write. You certainly have the privilege and freedom to watch (or not watch) any program or station you desire. That's the wonderful thing about living in this fine country... "Freedom of Choice".

Bottom line... with Digital broadcasts... we are currently in the testing phase. We didn't like the quality of the picture and have ordered a supplemental piece of equipment. I am hopeful we will be operational in 2 to 3 weeks.

Regarding Dish Network, you can read my comments on our web page www.woitv.com DirecTV is about to offer the same Local into Local programming package. They were trying for a May launch and it looks now that it will likely be June. WOI will be included in that package from the outset. I would hope that would be the impetus for Dish Network to come to an equitable arrangement with WOI regarding local inclusion.


I like how his bottom line doesn't really promise anything. He just basically says he hopes they can be up in 2-3 weeks... Doesn't seem like much of a bottom line to me.

Then I emailed him back this:

Mr Porter:

I fully agree that my email was not professional. It was purposely written in this way. I apologize for starting right off the bat writing a letter in this way. However, I have spoken to many people about your station and have heard many complaints. I hear that letters are simply ignored etc etc I hear that dates are quoted only to be broken OVER AND OVER again.

My letter was not professional, but yours is ALSO unprofessional. Simply pointing out MY letter was unprofessional is unprofessional in itself. Also telling me that you were not going to write back is EXTREMELY unprofessional.

Did you bother to read that message board? All of those dates quoted from people that called into your station. During this time LAST YEAR you stated DTV would be operational (maybe not you, but someone in your station). I bet you probably just saw the magnitude of posts and decided not to read them all. I can certainly understand this, as you are probably a very busy man. I suggest that you take a look at that entire thread and see how many times people have said WOI was going to be online any day.

Instead of simply making fun of me, could you please look into this matter?I understand that you are trying to get DTV working, but just think about this for a moment.

People call into your station, inquiring about the status of your DTV broadcasting. Someone at your station gives a date. In turn, this date slips, and then nothing happens. Someone calls in again, another date is given, and then it slips. This happens over and over again. What do you think is going to happen? That everyone will just sit back and not say anything about the repeated lies?

You can attack me all you wish, calling me unprofessional. I am EXTREMELY surprised that you did attack me and told me you weren't going to email back calling me unprofessional, when you are doing the exact same thing(being unprofessional). I am perplexed by this.

Anyway, I am still without your station from Dish. I'm locked into a 1 year contract. We can't pick up your station with an antenna(Well, not without half a screen of static), so we are without ABC. So, as you can see, I am without choice. For whatever reason, you are holding out on Dish Network, even though they have gotten NBC, PBS, CBS, and FOX, you seem to hold out. Could you at least maybe give me a reason why instead of attacking my professionalism again? I like how you say you assume that when DirecTV comes out with locals, Dish will follow, but in reality you have no idea.

And sir, I am thankful that I have gotten at least one possible answer from you. You state you hope to be operational in 2-3 weeks (like I haven't heard this before). But, I'll take a leap of faith and just assume that maybe YOU, the general manager MAY know what he's talking about.

And I STILL can't believe that you pointed out my unprofessionalism. I am a young college student, you are the General Manager of a TV station. You are representing your station and even ABC, and stooping to my level. I just represent myself, and frankly sir, I really don't care what you think of me.

You may not care what I think about you, but as I said, you are representing your station and even ABC. Just a word of advice, try to keep your letters professional in the future, no matter how unprofessional the other person is. I always thought this was common sense. I was always under the impression that a manager was always supposed to stay professional. Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe this is why it seems your station is the poorest ran.

PBS, FOX, NBC, CBS all beat you and you still can't get it working? On top of that there have been numerous quoted dates that have passed by... You are last to Dish and you are last for HDTV.

Anyways, by now you're probably really upset, not talking anything seriously and not thinking with an open mind. This is to be expected. Have a great day.

Please Note: This is an unprofessional letter. Also please note that you gave me zero concrete answers in your mail. You danced around everything. For a manager you seem to have no clue what is going on.

ha!

2 to 3 weeks...
2 to 3 weeks...
2 to 3 weeks...

I guess they think if they repeat it enough times it might eventually come true and they will get their crappy 480i signal live.

AustinPowers, I was surprised you got any response at all from WOI.

While I agree with most of the premise of your note; such a rambling, disjointed note is probably not helping advance our cause. I just hope that you haven't dried up the trickle of (mostly bad) information coming out of WOI.

I do disagree with you regarding the advertiser boycott. Especially if we can get one of the other Des Moines stations or the Register to give us a little press. Their checkbook is our only real leverage against them, they obviously don't care what ABC says at the corporate level. If they get enough of their advertisers calling and screaming at the sales manager because of this potential boycott, they WILL pay attention. They aren't attracting the top flight businesses to advertise with them anyway. I am guessing that KDSM's rates are very close to WOI's, small advertisers will jump ship rather than face bad press in a shaky economy.

Marshall Porter sent me a smart-assed response once too ... what a child. Stop whining like a girl and just get your damn DT/HD/Dish signals on the air for cripes sake! At this rate, the WB will have their stuff up and running before WOI.

jtuck2,

An advertiser boycott wouldn't do much. Most people don't care about HDTV and hate it since it'll make them have to get new cable boxes or new TV's.

Basically, I think the best thing you could do is what I do, Just don't watch WOI. If you could get people to simply not watch the station, it's basically the same thing as an advertiser boycott.

If their ratings go down, then they may actually do something.

An Advertiser boycott would just take too much organization. First you'd have to watch WOI and then figure out how advertises, then you have to take notes not to buy anything from those companies.

And how many people read this thread? 10-20? How many people in Iowa care about HDTV and WOI's lack of programming, maybe 1000 people out of 3 million. The numbers just aren't there.

I disagree 100%. Not watching won't do a thing if they don't know. It's nothing like an advertiser's boycott.

I spoke to a high-level employee of WOI on Monday. I told him an advertiser's boycott is in the planning stages. The panic in his face was evident. Advertisers are their primary revenue stream and it's hard for them to get new advertisers because they are so low in the ratings. Bad publicity that threatens that revenue is a potential huge hit to their finances. It doesn't matter initially if it's 6 people or 600. Getting the advertiser's (and WOI's) attention is all that matters.

Remember, this is all about the money. It's obvious they don't care about the viewers. At half power 5 hours per day, it will cost WOI about $1500 per week to run the new transmitter. At full power 12 hours per day they're up to $36,000 per month.

I still think we need an organized group and a plan to make this happen.

Dave, I am in. I agree 100% that the only way to hurt them is in the checkbook. They obviously are eroding market share and losing viewers right now with their position on Dish and quality of local programming. It must not be too big of a concern. Not watching is not an option, because I don't watch anything but Monday Night Football on ABC anyway.

I had planned on setting the Tivo to grab WOI when it isn't busy. It would be the first time ever that someone was fast forwarding to the commercials rather than over them. LOL. I will use that method to develop a list of local advertisers. God knows I don't want to actually have to watch the crappy channel's programming. I assume we are trying to keep this on a local level?

I also wonder if we could contact WOI's sales manager and simply ask for a list of current advertisers. Ostensibly with the idea that one of us, as a business, were going to become an advertiser and wanted to avoid a conflict with a competitor. Underhanded, I know. Give me some feedback on this.

With a good laser printer and some postage, there is no reason that there has to be more than 2 of us in the "Central Iowa Home Theater Enthusiasts". With a good name and a well worded letter, we will get some attention. The advertisers don't have to know how strong we are or aren't. Let's get behind this gang. Enough is enough.

Also, does anyone have any ideas to utilize the local media? Anyone have any contacts at the Register or the other 3 local TV stations? Maybe we can get Ed to use the Million Watt MegaDoppler to fry WOI's SD equipment? Seriously, does anyone think that we can use the local media to shine a little negative publicity on WOI? WHO and KCCI are both up and running over 50% of their broadcast day in compliance with the FCC (and spending a fair amount of money to do it), why wouldn't they both want to rub WOI's nose in it a little bit?

I too am tired of Mr. Porter's missed dates and excuses. If ABC is broadcasting HD football this year, and I don't get to see it, look out. They will hear me screaming at ABC HQ. If anyone caught the HD playoff games last winter on CBS, you know why I am so excited.

We can use this board to organize our thoughts for now. I can also be PM'ed or emailed at blackdogzoi@yahoo.com

Anyone who has WOI on, please try to jot down local advertisers and post them here, or email them to me.

Justin -

I'll start a list. If you can get one going we can compare later. We will need to first send a letter to the VP of Marketing/Sales at each of the advertisers with copies to the WOI marketing staff.

We can then try a news story approach by submitting the story through WHO's and KCCI's websites. I've had pretty good luck with that. We can also do a letter to the editor for the Des Moines Register.

We should then try to talk it up to extent possible on some of the other forums. I also plan to put a bumper sticker on my car.

Dave

Hey Guys,

This is my first post to the list, but I've been lurking for quite some time (since February). I'd be up for joining in the WOI advertiser boycott. I'm getting tired of this waiting game and am fed up with the broken promises and missed deadlines that have been given here.

I just watch Jimmy Kimmel on that station and that is it. I refuse to watch anything else until their Digital signal is up and running.

I'd like to add my name to the list of Central Iowa Home Theater Enthusists and join in on the cause.

Sincerely,

~JR Wymer

Thanks, JR. You're in.