Sinclair removes "The Tube"

Hopefully Raycom will decide to drop it also. It's killing the HD feed in Memphis.

The Tube has also removed from the ota subchannel here. Not much of a loss IMO because the abysmal pq due to being bit starved.

I was getting kinda tired of seeing the same videos over & over. I didn't see any holiday themed videos either. They needed to branch out a little more pehaps other genre's or themed music blocks.

Oh Well!

According to the station engineer for the Sinclair station in Baltimore, the reason for dropping the Tube has to do with meeting the FCC requirements for being able to broadcast the Emergency Alert System on all sub-channels. The FCC requirement went in effect on January 1, 2007. Sinclair decided to drop the Tube than spend whatever time and effort was needed to meet the requirement for the less important sub-channels. So there will be more bandwidth for the HD channels on the Sinclair stations, which is ironic in a odd way.

Good news. Now my local CBS affiliate isn't multicasting.

Great news.

Now if we can get NBC to dump Weather+.

LOL!

My wife won't be happy. When there was nothing to watch she would put on The Tube to relive her glory days with 1980's videos.

There's still VH1 Classic, kind of.

Anyway, it is killing the PQ on WDCW, and The Tube itself is unwatchable PQ-wise.

This channel would be great as a (HD) cable channel, though.

The Tube is gone for my are but they are broadcasting something it just makes the screen black not sure what thats about other then it means they will not give bandwidth to the network channel.

The bitrate of the "ex" affiliate in Milwaukee went from 14 to 18Mbps for video which is good news for My Network TV fans.

Your receiver might be remembering what was once there.
Try a re-scan.

This is terrible. The Tube had much better programing than what my local CW affiliate is showing. For those of us who enjoy the older music video's and can't stand MTV and VH1 in its current state, the Tube was a GREAT option. The Tube's audience demographic is highly sought after by advertisers. It's shameful that Sinclair failed to recognize this.

Complain to them and the FCC!

A station representative from the Milwaukee market posted on the local board that the removal of the Tube had to do with new E/I broadcasting requirements. The sub-channels are now included when calculating how much E/I programming is required for each station, making carrying it cost-prohibitive.

Sadly, some of what is on WeatherPus er Plus is considered educational, so it will not be going away.

Other multi-casters will have to deal with the E/I requirements, so we may start seeing some of them disappear.

Scott

I LIKE NBC's Weather channel.

Damn, I wish the Create channel would go away too.

Good. Subchannels are the devil.

I don't buy it. Throw a couple of kiddie programs on at 6am M-F and you've more than met the E/I requirement.

This has more to do with the financial state of The Tube and their short term prospects - as well as FCC regulations other than E/I broadcasts.

http://biz.yahoo.com/e/061220/tubm.ob10qsb.html

Results of Operations for the Nine Months ended September 30, 2006 and 2005

We have recorded revenues of $1,558 for the nine months ended September 30, 2006 compared the approximately $253,000 in net revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2005. During the first nine months of 2005, the Company generated revenue primarily from its record label subsidiary. During the first nine months of 2006, the Company did not generate any revenue from its record label subsidiary but did generate $1,558 from e-commerce sales.

Operating expenses from continuing operations were $9.8 million and $1.8 million for the three months ended September 30, 2006 and 2005, respectively, the majority of which was general and administrative expenses. General and administrative expenses were $5.8 million for the three months ended September 30, 2006, compared with $1.3 million for the three months ended September 30, 2005. The increase reflects increases in affiliation agreement fees, amortization of intangible assets, bad debt expense, stock compensation to directors and stock options to officers, employees and consultants. Legal and professional expenses were $353,000 and $285,000, for the three months ended September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2005, respectively. The increase reflects increased compliance cost for SEC filings, legal costs and auditing expenses. Thus far in 2006 our liquidity constraints have limited our ability to engage in marketing, promotion, advertising and similar expenses necessary to develop our business. We expect this trend to continue until such time as we can complete another substantial debt or equity offering.
Liquidity and Capital Resources

The growth and development of our business will require a significant amount of additional working capital. We currently have limited financial resources and based on our current operating plan, we will need to raise additional capital in order to continue as a going concern. We currently do not have adequate cash to meet our short or long term objectives. In the event additional capital is raised, it may have a dilutive effect on our existing stockholders.

Good, maybe the Tube will go away permanently. Even more proof that no one watches it.

Thanks. I guess I jumped the gun there . I did the rescan it appears they are remapping the sub channel to the main one now.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=TUBM...off&z=l&q=l&c=

Yep, obviously Sinclair saw where their 600,000 shares of stock was headed (worth about 1/10th of what it was back in March) there clearly wasn't much of a reason to keep spending anything to keep this on on the air.

um, don't believe this statement. I know of several individuals with PLENTY of discretionary income that love this channel.

My wife and I both liked the Tube. It put me in a bad spot since I despise multicasting alongside an HD channel, but the station itself was pretty nice. There was a good mix of music, and no annoying reality TV shows.

We'll both miss it. It would have made a fine SD channel.

Scott

In Raleigh, NC it was at a perfect location. Our MNTV affiliate was Sinclair owned and only in SD, so the Tube made a perfect sidecar for a SDTV crapfest, such as MyRDU 28.

RIP The Tube

They can get it for free with a simple Satellite Dish - good thing they have that discretionary income so it won't be a problem.

no need for sat, our area recieves OTA...

my point was that this programming may be reaching a coveted market segment.

Without ratings for digital channels, there's no proof that anyone DOESN'T watch it. Of course, there's no proof that anyone DOES watch it, either, except for whatever music they sell via TheTubeTV.com. That's the problem a multicaster has to live with until the sets are out there and the ratings services start measuring them. It's still early in the game, and as long as there are ideas floating around, there will more than likely be subchannels, regardless of what happens to The Tube.

BTW, The Tube is still up in Eastern Iowa. (KWWL, formerly owned by Raycom Media -- a founding investor in The Tube -- but recently sold to Quincy Newspapers, Inc.)