Salt Lake City, UT - HDTV - Page 116

Lost all the Salt Lake City channels on DirecTV (SD and HD) and on DISH Network (SD) from 4:10 PM until 8:00 PM on Tuesday, due to a fiber optic outage between Salt Lake and Castle Rock.
I wonder if it had anything to do with the fires.

Noticed that KPNZ (24) has not had PSIP info for several weeks.
Also, noted that channel 19 has their transmitter on, but no programming.

To the best of my knowledge, Dish uplinks in Cheyenne, WY, not Castle Rock, CO. Does the fiber from SLC route through Castle Rock on the way to Cheyenne?

From what I understand, the fiber belongs to Ascent Media, which is part of DirecTV now.....or, something like that.
The one fiber carries the SLC stations to a Transmission center at Castle Rock, where it then feeds to DirecTV and DISH, both.
It's all pretty confusing, but I think it then still goes to Gilbert, AZ for uplink of the SLC locals.

It seems to change a lot. The pickup point (the "Local POP") was recently moved to the KTVX/KUCW studios.

KTVX (ABC) and KUCW (CW) will be getting a new owner: This past Thursday, KTVX and KUCW (plus 10 other Newport Television stations) were sold to Nexstar Broadcasting as part of Newport Television's sale of 22 of the stations it owns or manages to three separate companies. Nexstar previously managed KUTV (CBS) and KMYU (MNT/This) when they were owned by Four Points Media before Cerberus Capital Management sold that entire group to Sinclair Broadcast Group late last year.

It's true - KTVX 4.2 is no longer broadcasting "The Cool TV", it is now Me-TV. I wonder what other changes are in store for KTVX and CW - will they change 30.2 from TCN?

For those of you that miss The Cool TV and have a Roku box, you can find a live feed of The Cool TV on the MummyBox private channel.
To add to your Roku (Free):

code livetvnow
https://owner.roku.com/Add/livetvnow
Edited by Vegas_Vic - 7/30/12 at 7:34pm

Starting earlier today, KTVX over-the-air digital 4.2 changed affiliates and is indeed now an affiliate of Me-TV. There are no other changes at this time to KTVX (branded ABC4) or KUCW (branded CW30). The change is not because of the ongoing lawsuit against the parent company of TheCoolTV for non-payment of broadcast services.

Unlike KCSG in Southern Utah, KTVX's broadcast of Me-TV is the unedited national schedule from the central time zone, meaning that all television programs are only off by one whole hour. You can view the current national schedule by going to http://metvnetwork.com/metv_national.pdf - remember to subtract one hour from the schedule.

I have mixed feelings - it's sad to lose the Cool TV, it's what MTV used to be back when MTV was cool. On the other hand, Me-TV has a lot of good content.

Last Thursday, July 26th, KCSG added FamilyNet to Baja Broadband Channel 87. FamilyNet is limited to cable and satellite viewing because of programming restrictions placed on it by the network. Otherwise, FamilyNet would have been added to digital subchannel 14.4 in Cedar City and digital subchannel 16.4 in St George.

http://www.kcsg.com/view/full_story/19583023/article-Family-Net-Television-Joins-KCSG

Sounds like KUTV and KMYU might be dropped by DISH Network on Thursday morning.
Sinclair and DISH are at it on Retrans, and Sinclair says it might be permanent.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/488487-Updated_Dish_Sinclair_Retrans_Feud_Threatens_Station_Blackouts_In_45_Cities.php

http://www.kutv.com/

http://kmyu.tv/

In the story they ran on the air, they mentioned that Cable TV and DirecTV would not be affected.
I wonder if the reporter has ever heard of "over the air"?

And next will be Fox, then Time-Warner. One thing's for certain: There will never be a dispute with QVC, HSN, etc.

The crawl line we saw yesterday on KUTV included OTA.

It should have been sponsored by Ballard Supply.

Planned power reductions at Farnsworth Peak

Sunday, Aug 26th and continuing through Friday, August 31st, between the hours of 7:00am and 6:00pm, there will be planned power reductions of all FM and TV stations on Farnsworth Peak. This is being done to facilitate the installation of a new, multi-user "Community" FM broadcast antenna at the site, and to protect tower workers as they climb the towers.

This may also be an opportunity for Salt Lake Valley residents to try out their telescopes and long camera lenses, and see what the crews are doing .

At various times of the day, FM Broadcast stations may operate at reduced power on their main antennas, lower power on their auxiliary "standby" antennas that are located nearer to ground level on the perimeter of the site, or at greatly reduced power on the auxiliary antennas....dependent on where the crews are currently climbing.

All of the full-power DTV Utah TV stations will operate from the primary antennas, but at 15% of normal power, or about an 8 dB reduction in power. This may cause some reception difficulties with indoor antennas, or with those who do not have sufficient signal "margin".

The low-power stations, KPNZ (24) and KSVN (25/39) will operate at half-power during the time period.

It's not known how this may affect translator stations, but the operators and engineers for those stations have been notified of the planned power reductions.

Also, the Combiner system for the new antenna has already been installed. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, the frequency "sweep" cannot be done at this time, but will be rescheduled for some overnight period in the upcoming weeks. This "sweep", which requires tuning the system with very low-level signals and sensitive receiving equipment, will require all of the TV and FM stations on the site to be completely powered down for a short period of time.

We expect to know the schedule of the planned outage in the next day or two, and will announce the date and times as they become available.

Thanks for the heads up, Ken.

The tower crew was up there yesterday, assembling stuff on the ground and waiting for a cable-pulling truck.
All stations stayed at normal power.
They plan to reduce power and start climbing today, around 9:00 AM, or so.

Thanks for the update Ken, I couldn't receive any signal from Salt Lake except KUED and Fox and thought it was my antenna. I spent the night on my roof trying to see if I had any loose connections!

Ken, any idea how this will affect the outlying translators? I know that I was trying to get a signal last night, but was unable to even at 10 p.m. when they were supposed to be at full power again?

There may be some variations due to tropospheric issues, but I think most have of the translators were designed to have sufficient margin......the power reduction is about 8 dB.
I don't think they've even started the climbing yet. As of noon Tuesday, they were still working on assembly stuff, on the ground.
Danny, who is the transmitter engineer up there this week, says there are thunderstorms expected on Thursday and Friday.
Not good!

I am not able to receive channels 2 through 5, or 11. But I am able to receive 7, 13 and 30 which is very strange. Any ideas? I have checked with other neighbors who have antenna's who are having the same problems.

Not sure what the problem would be......where do you live?

I just hopped on here to say that KJZZ is using the power-down period to work on replacing a bad piece of waveguide (I think it''s the one for their microwave), which required lowering power on most of the other stations. They are off the air right now. Need to get everything done as efficiently as possible.

I live in Nibley, Cache County. I have a straight line of sight view of Mt. Pisgah. last week I had all the channels coming in great, now not so much.

Fixed it, it was a problem with the antenna, when I replaced it, I got the channels all coming in strong. Thanks for your suggestions.

Thought I posted this already, but I don't see it..............

Due to getting started about three days late, the antenna installation on Farnsworth Peak will continue through next Wednesday. Power reductions on the FM and TV stations will remain in effect, during daylight hours when the crews are climbing.

Note that there are some known problems with reception at a few translator sites. These may be weather related, so the signals may get better or worse during the reduced-power hours.

Anybody in Cedar City?..............................

I got a call from someone on Optimum Cable (formerly, Bresnan) in Cedar City, saying that there were signal problems down there on Sunday.
She says that the channel is now gone, and it has a banner saying something like, "Due to KSL not providing a quality signal to us, this channel is not available".

Anybody know if that's what is going on, and if they are only showing that advisory during the daytime hours, when the SLC stations are on low-power?
Are other SLC stations off down there, too?
How about translators?

(We have heard some complaints from Cedar City, and Saint George......but, that's all I know of.)

Anyone know what has happened to KBYU (11.1), BYUtv (11.2), and Create (11.3) broadcasting from Web Hill in St George? I have not been able to get a signal for the past month over-the-air.

I joined this blog to see if any of you gentlemen could advise me if i should attempt to buy a hdtv antenna? I live in the thriving metropolis of Santaquin. I have tried all the sites that determine if my location has enough reception to receive signals from any of the transmitters in utah, The prognosis doesn't look good. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank You
J.E. Mason

According to the SiliconDust web site, here is a list of channels and translators that you can receive in Santaquin Utah.

http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/lineup_web/US:84655#lineup_2994733

Looks like the FM antenna installation on Farnsworth is further behind than we thought.
The power reductions may last for several more days....latest guess is "Saturday".

We'll see.

(The Deseret News may shoot and publish a photo or two. Watch for it.)