The official final DTV Table Of Allotments/channel change thread - Page 59

In San Diego it's 6:58. No idea why an Analog only station in Mexico is participating but there are other mexican OTA stations that aren't participating.

KVTV Laredo, TX (CBS analog 13) has switched off its analog transmitter due to an equipment failure and is now all-digital on physical channel 31; a competitor has a news report (KVTV doesn't have a website).

There are a few other stations who have had analog equipment failure and just opted to cease analog than spend the money to repair it at this late date.

New Orleans had it's first channel permanently "make the switch" yesterday.

WVUE, FOX8 shut off its analog channel 8 transmitter for good yesterday morning at 8:00 AM. I have not heard much hue and cry from people who lost the signal, yet.

WVUE will spend the week converting their analog VHF transmitter to a digital one, during which time they will remain on their pre-transition frequency of 29. Next Monday, Dec. 22, again at 8:00 AM if I understood correctly, they will shut down their channel 29 digital transmitter and fire up their channel 8 one. Then their transition will be 100% complete. We'll see how much hue and cry there is then.

In other news:

The New Orleans DMA did a digital test about a week ago. All full power stations, every single one, at precisely 6:59 PM central (to catch people tuning in for prime time) simultaneously put up a slide with a big red 'X' on their analog channel with the wording, "FAIL! Your television is not ready for the transition to digital." On their digital channel, they put up a slide with a big green check mark and the wording, "PASS! Your television is ready for the transition to digital."

All full power New Orleans stations did this simultaneously. The slides remained on screen for 30 seconds. Each station did their own slide design, so the appearance varied slightly, but they all agreed on identical wording, and that the "Fail" slides should have a big red 'X' dominating most of the screen and the "Pass" slides would have a big green check mark.

This from Scott Fybush's NortEast Radio Watch website:

But WFXT has bigger concerns at the moment: after many months fighting problems with its aging analog transmission system, we're hearing that WFXT's analog signal finally gave up the ghost for good last week, leaving only WFXT-DT (RF 31), which is not yet at full power. Interestingly, WFXT had just last month submitted an STA application to the FCC asking for reduced analog power (293 kW visual) through the end of the transition period, due to "recent, partial damage to the licensed antenna."

This may be the first "Big 4" in a major market to go all digital, voluntary or not.

http://www.fybush.com/nerw.html

This also from Fybush:

Another Bay State analog TV station - albeit one that mainly serves RHODE ISLAND viewers - has gone dark. New Bedford-licensed WLWC (Channel 28), the CW affiliate for the Providence market, turned off its analog transmitter on December 9, leaving WLWC-DT 22 behind.

MAINE Public Broadcasting Network is planning an early shutdown of its analog signals. WMEA-TV (Channel 26) in Biddeford, WCBB-TV (Channel 10) in Augusta, WMEB-TV (Channel 12) in Orono, WMED-TV (Channel 13) in Calais and WMEM-TV (Channel 10) in Presque Isle will sign off in analog early on the morning of January 11, allowing engineers time to convert several of those VHF transmitters for MPBN's post-transition channels. While WMEA-DT will keep its present channel 45, WMEB-DT will stay on its present channel 9 and WMED-DT will stay on its present channel 10, WCBB-DT and WMEM-DT will be moving to 10 from their present spots at channels 17 and 20, respectively.

(And that, sadly, is somewhat more information than you - or any average viewer - would learn from visiting MPBN's own rather sparse DTV information pages; the challenge of fully educating viewers about the challenges of the digital conversion, especially the tricky matter of antenna selection in mixed VHF-UHF markets, still isn't being fully met in too many areas, and we're down to the two-month mark now even in the areas that aren't experiencing early analog shutdowns.)

http://www.fybush.com/nerw.html

Once MPBN goes digital, half the stations in Portland will be digital-only.

WCSH A+D
WMTW A+D
WCBB D
WGME A+D
WPFO A
WMEA D
WPME D
WPXT D

- Trip

The 'Nightlight' bill directing the FCC to plan for analog stations to remain on the air with public service announcements for 30 days has been delivered to the White House. President Bush will sign it.

It's going to be interesting to discover who they 'encourage' to do this.

--- CHAS

Also, WBKO 13 Bowling Green, KY had turned off their analog channel back on Dec. 8th, but it is taking two weeks for them to transition to digital channel 13. They are going to turn on their digital 13 on Monday morning, Dec. 22nd. The thing is, is that they had planned to come on the air at 13.5kw ERP, but they changed their antenna from directional to omnidirectional and now they will be coming on the air at 11.6kw. They do have a CP to maximize up to 22kw, but they can't do that until they order and install a piece of equipment which means they won't go to 22kw until Aug. 18, 2009. Bummer! If you want to keep up with this station. I am posting a link below to the engineer's blog on the station's website.

http://www.wbko.com/blogs/engineersblog

NashDigie signing off.

Yes. And one of those stations was our WEDY-65 in New Haven. The transmitter went belly-up back in May or June of '06. Within six weeks we had ordered and installed our Ch. 6 DTV transmitter, did the prescribed testing, then turned it off while we waited for the license from the FCC. Well, 2-1/2 years later we are still waiting. Go figure??

At this point - I wouldn't blame any station that had an expensive repair to make on analog to just make the decision to leave it of and proceed with post transition DTV plans. It just doesn't make alot of economic sense to do so...

I suppose the equation would have to figure cost of repair + operational costs vs. lost revenue from analog being down - if revenue is larger - then repair (maybe).

Any input from you pros in the field ?

I saw a KASW ad about a DTV test a couple weeks ago and watched it for the heck of it and the odd thing to me was they did not display any notice on the HD channel at all. If you tuned in for the test on cable or DTV you might think they forgot about it. I don't know why stations are being forced to run crawls on their digital channels, to me it is just confusing people. We have a CA station that flash cut and is only available in digital running the crawls.

The other thing they did is was run the test over the last segment of the show they were running. Too bad if you were watching it I guess.

If I read that right, that means you haven't been on the air for 2.5 years?

The local Madison DMA test, last wednesday, was for 1/2 hour. The PASS was that you didn't see the crawl and was able to watch HDTV programming normally, or your satellite/cable supplied channel. The analog channel had the primetime programming shrunk down and a crawl saything it was a test and to call a local hot line if there were questions. The hotline was manned from 7-9pm. It seems that not all of the local cable OTA channels were getting the HD feed for the SD and those non-converted viewers failed, when they actually didn't.

If you want to see what each of the stations had, head on over to the local Madison thread and there will be a link for the video and a link to a still where one o the stations goofed the crawl.

No one minute or less of a test here. By doing it in primetime, they got your attention.

That is because if you are already watching DTV or satellite/cable, then you pass the test. It was for analog viewers, since they are the ones that will lose the channels if they don't get equiped for DTV.

KAZT-CA repeats KAZT-TV, which is currently an analog on 7 and digital on 25 in Prescott. Since it's a direct repeat of the programming on that station, they have to show it.

- Trip

Did KASW run a scroll on analog and continue normal programming, or did they completely replace the show on analog with a failed message? If the former, remember that the analog channel has been a downconvert of the HD feed for a while now, so displaying a "Pass" message on HD would have shown it on analog too, and that would have been really confusing.

Presumably there will be a few more stations which will go dark on analog prematurely. As they get closer to the analog shutdown, even modest equipment failures may not be worth repairing depending on the possible lost remaining analog OTA viewers vs cost of repair. It would ironic if one of the night-light stations has the analog transmitter fail 2 days after the "night-light" period starts. Do they tell FCC oops, no night-light in this market? (assuming the concept is 1 station in a market).

Except for the satellite/cable systems that are still getting the SD channels from the analog source. Even on Verizon Fios, 3 SD local stations "failed" a 2 minute analog shutoff test in the Washington market last night - WFDC Univision 14, WMPT PBS (Maryland Public TV) 22 and WETA PBS 26. Yes, Verizon is all digital, but they are obviously still using the analog broadcast for these 3 stations. Verizon has the HD channels for MPT-DT and WETA-DT, so they have to hook up the down-converters for those 2 for the SD channels. Guess Verizon has not gotten the WFDC-DT signal yet. All the cable and sat companies have 62 more days - no sweat, right?

Because the FCC requires it and it has to be documented as well. Every DTV spot you see is documented and reported to the FCC quarterly and that report has to be posted on the stations website for public viewing.

It wont be a mandated thing...it is optional for a station to do so.

A better non-electric non-kool-Aid DTV test for WFXT seems to have been the Ice Storm,
where ATSC&QAM DTV passes the test and NTSC fails!

POST-TRANSITION DTV TABLE OF ALLOTMENTS, 47 C.F.R. 73.622(I), HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. Changed station WHNT-DT's DTV channel from 19 to 46. (Dkt No. 08-194, RM-11488). Action by: Chief, Video Division, Media Bureau. Adopted: 12/15/2008 by R&O. (DA No. 08-2718).

POST-TRANSITION DTV TABLE OF ALLOTMENTS, 47 C.F.R. 73.622(I), SUPERIOR, NEBRASKA. Changed station KSNB-DT's DTV channel from 34 to 4. Proceeding Terminated. (Dkt No. RM-11496, 08-209). Action by: Chief, Video Division, Media Bureau. Adopted: 12/16/2008 by R&O. (DA No. 08-2720).

POST-TRANSITION DTV TABLE OF ALLOTMENTS, 47 C.F.R. 73.622(I), CLOVIS, NEW MEXICO. Proposed change of station KVIH-DT's DTV channel from 20 to 12. Comments Due: 15 days after date of publication in the Federal Register. Reply Comments Due: 25 days after date of publication in the Federal Register. (Dkt No. 08-132, RM-11464). Action by: Chief, Video Division, Media Bureau. Adopted: 12/16/2008 by NPRM. (DA No. 08-2719).

I was just coming to post that!

- Trip

4.4kW on 4 should be "interesting," especially in light of our discussions on the Lexington thread. However, it should be better than 0.534kW on 34.

Perhaps they will apply for more power. I don't know how "final" the R&O values are.

You are an astute reader.

They played maybe a 60 second video with audio saying you only have a few weeks to get a converter and they looped probably about five minutes and rejoined at the next commercial break. A couple stations played the same video today.


I understand that, I just don't think it makes sense to require they play it on the digital side.

Now that we have that determination accomplished, even I am at a loss as to how the station can still exist, without any income. Is the station only available via cable and DBS?

Even though I shouldn't, I find it amazing that the FCC didn't have this taken care of soon after the paperwork was submitted.

Our tax $$$ at work.

Really? I wonder where the local stations have buried that info. I certainly do not remember seeing it on the station's site that I visit most often.

I'll have to look and find said report.

WEDY-DT is a part of a 4-station network of PBS stations in Connecticut. It would, if on the air, repeat 100% of the programming of WEDH-DT in Hartford.

- Trip