Mobile, AL / Panama City, FL - HDTV - Page 130

The stations should be free to have as many digital sub-channels as they want without government regulation and the folks who operate stations with sub-channels should be aware of the consequences to picture quality by now.

As far as the FCC's concerned, as long as a station is putting out a DIGITAL signal (not even HD) and meets all of its obligations in the community, that's all the FCC requires for compliance. HD exists because of network obligations and the broadcasters that actually take the initiative to upgrade their equipment, although this is swayed by the demands of the industry and by consumers who make the investment in new televisions capable of airing HD content. Very few "digital" televisions exist, most are in HD.

On the flipside, subchannels are launched by stations to increase revenue and/or to provide additional programming to broaden a stations' audience (but have been added at the corporate level by broadcasters as well). The value of the subchannel should make the broadcaster evaluate how to allocate bandwidth.

Ok...it's been well over a month now. Any progress on getting WALA & WFNA back on Mediacom?

How long did the WEAR spat with Mediacom last back in 07? LIN may be working on a record here!

Yepp, and as someone who cares about quality, this bothers me.

One person up the tower for each sub- channel? We would have to gather an army for Channel 21!

Anyone else having picture issues on Bounce TV? (WFNA 55.2) I've tried it on 2 of my HD sets and both converter boxes and despite a near 100 percent signal on all, the picture has blocking effects and glitches every few seconds.

Yup. Been that way since they launched. Either they can't fix it yet or they don't care.

Ive also seen a lot more blocking on 55.1 this season, very annoying.

Ditto on Bounce.

Those of you who can rx Fox 10 OTA, how large of an antenna do you have?
Since Comcast did the forced digital "upgrade" they have been doing once a week channel changes back and forth to wkrg and retro. Fox 10 moved but I think it is stable now. I have both a cable internal and OTA external tuners for my WMC setup. Rather than hope that Comcast will stop meddling, I started moving WMC over to the OTA tuner. All is well with WKRG again but I can't get FoX. I am using a dinky Radio Shack Rabbit Ears so I know I need to get something better. Any suggestions for getting Fox back? I may just drop Comcast all together if I can get my OTA working like it should.

Thank you...

Where are you located?

Near the Pensacola airport, I can receive Fox 10 (broadcasting on VHF channel 9) using a full-sized outdoor antenna, about 12 ft high, mounted to a railing on the second floor. So, the antenna is about 30 feet above ground. I cannot receive it using rabbit ears either on the first floor nor the second floor. I cannot receive it with rabbit ears on Pensacola Beach.

Thanks for the info. I am in west mobile ...thinking of putting something in my attic. The rabbit ears were a temp solution and just for emegencies, now it looks like I am going to have to do something . I can get their sister station, just not Fox proper.

As I mentioned, WALA is broadcasting on a VHF channel (9) while the 'sister' station is broadcasting on a UHF channel. Comparing reception issues is like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges.

Could you put the rabbit ears in the attic and see how that works? Height is almost as magical an elixir to this problem as the size of the antenna.

I've also got a pair of rabbit ears, amplified, that sit behind the living room TV as a backup for when cable goes out. I get everything BUT Fox 10 there, and can raise it up to about 12 feet off the ground to get it at 70%.

If you're lucky, the attic may be enough if you have a good line of site to Baldwin County.

I am within a few miles of virtually all the towers. I live in Spanish Fort. But I'm down in a hole, surrounded by tall pines, and that hurts reception. I have used the Channel Master Eight Bay 4228 in my attic, pointing pretty much due East, and I get good reception on just about all the locals. I have the old, discontinued 4228, the new model, I think is called the 4228HD. Some of the reviews have said the new is much worse than the old. The good thing about the old 4228, is that it's gain extended into the VHF high band range, which would be what you would need for Channel 9. But if you can get an acceptable picture with just rabbit ears in the attic, the 4228 would be overkill of a high magnitude.

Mediacom customers can rejoice...WALA and WFNA are back up on Mediacom!

As for Comcast and DirecTV customers...we'll see what happens when it's re-negotiation time with LIN, becuase their track record has been ugly with Brighthouse, Dish and even a close call with COX a few months back.

Yes I could with more cable. But if I go to the trouble shouldn't i just get a slightly better Ant? What is a good decent antenna for the attic? Nothing fancy. Also can any of you get a station in Pascagoula called wkfk ch 7? I know it's a long shot but just wondering as they have Retro which WKRG dropped recently. Thanks.

I can't speak to antenna recommendations but I can say that WKFK has a permit to raise their power a good bit, which will extend their coverage east and west. I think the primary contour will at least make it to Grand Bay so in the future you may have some luck with them. They're moving to channel 13 IIRC.

WKFK is, for some strange reason, on Riviera Cable here in Foley and it is RTV 24/7 as far as I can tell. No program guide, though, as it's on channel 24 "Leased Access".

I may not be able to receive programming from WKFK-TV due to my location (midtown Mobile) and my use of indoor antennas, but the use of their main channel and sub-channels gives me an idea of what could be done for WFGX-TV. For example, WFGX-TV could be broadcasting "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" from ThisTV on a sub-channel while the main channel has "Enjoying Everyday Life with Joyce Meyer" before the station broadcasts "Mona the Vampire" on both the main channel and the sub-channel.


According to the programming guide on the World Wide Web site for WKFK, all programs from the Retro Television Network (RTV) are broadcast on their first sub-channel (the main channel has a mix of local programs, RTV programs, America One programs, and ION Television programs) and all programs from ION Television are broadcast on the second sub-channel. According to Zap2it, Riviera Cable in Foley provides programming from the main channel, which has a mix of local programs, RTV programs, America One programs, and ION Television programs.

The same company that runs WKFK also runs NCN, who sells the local advertising time on Riviera Cable channels in Foley.

Thanks for the info, did not realize that. I have some off the wall-weirdo reasons for wanting retro:
Many years ago when I was a child, NBC had a truck driving show that was partially filmed in Mobile and I got to see them make one of the episodes. The show was never rerun until 30+ years later on Retro started showing them a few months ago. Sure the show was cheesy but it brought back some great memories from long ago. So here I am recording them on WMC7 and all was going well until I got some kind of infection. No problem, I have a system image so I did a restore only to find out the hard way that MS backup in Win 7 will actively refuse to backup .wtv files. So I lost all my recordings, despite having a backup. So I started recording again and shortly afterwords WRKG pulled the rug out from under RTV. What timing! Oh well lesson learned and I now store the recordings on a cheap NAS - till I can get something better but I learned my lesson about trusting Microsoft.

Movin' On, right?

You got it! Seems like a lifetime ago for me, but still remember Dot Moore, Claude running up to the battleship, etc. Only episode I was able to save looks like it was shot at Dog River.

I'm afraid that was before my time. But anything showing Mobile from the 70s would be something I'd like to see. Mobile is not listed as one of the shooting cities on the Wikipedia entry for the show, was it only used in one or two episodes?

Well I had always heard rumors like 3 or 4 but just stuff I had heard from other kids so I was never sure till a few months ago. Before I lost access to RTV, I counted 4. That's probably it but still not 100% sure. Ironically one of my 4th-5th grade teacher's brother was in it. They had some of the well known locals in it as well.

Anyone out in TV land experiencing problems with WJTC either over the air or on cable/satellite?

From my location in Mobile, I am getting no (usable) signal on WJTC OTA, but it is working fine on DirecTV.

Apparently, this is enough of an issue for WJTC viewers that WPMI will be simulcasting the high school football game tonight as well as tomorrow's SEC game. A crawl is currently running on WPMI and WJTC to notify viewers of this.

At this time, I have no problems receiving programming from WJTC-TV broadcast over the air or provided through Comcast Cablevision of Mobile (I'm in midtown Mobile). Earlier today, local Comcast customers lost access to programming from the station between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM before programming returned shortly before 3:00 PM. An image from "The Dr. Oz Show" was frozen until programming returned.

100% here in Foley and it's on Riviera Cable just fine — at least the snowy analog version, I haven't checked the HD feed on the other TV yet.

The scroll is the same on both UTV and Local 15, so if you're watching WJTC it says the games will be there, then on Local 15 the games will be there. If we can see WJTC, why do need to know the games are going on as scheduled? Duh.

And why would they pre-emt NBC network programming for high school football? That's insane. They have a subchannel, use it instead.

I can now get WJTC over the air. If you can flip back and forth between WPMI & WJTC you can hear the difference in audio quality.

There must have been a change of plans, as WPMI-TV is still broadcasting regular programming while WJTC-TV is broadcasting SEC Network programming alone. At this time, the "breaking news" on the home page for WPMI-TV is the still the previous announcement regarding the SEC Network programming.