Of interest to TV DX'ers...

[Carmine]

Our Detroit PBS station (WTVS-56) has been off-the-air since mid-November. They claim that the tower was damaged in a storm (although I can recall no storm during that time which could have damaged an antenna tower).

Read the story here:

I personally think they are just trying to get their demographic of filthy-rich PBS donaters to buy digital sets (they even mention this in their web explaination). The low-power signal they're now sending out is unwatchable. They were hitting people hard for donations two years ago to make the switch to digital, which I consider to be total BS... They're supposed to be educational TV for poor-folk (like me) without cable, but they "needed" to be digital two years ago, before many of our for-profit stations even switched?

I smell a rat. I can't imagine any for-profit station being off the air for 6 weeks!

[wa2ise]

I've heard of stations going digital and shutting down their NTSC transmitters. That these stations figured that most of their audience was watching via cable. What they did was to provide digital decoders to the various cable head ends to feed the cable customers an analog NTSC signal. "Must carry". What the stations get out of this is a reduced transmitter power bill, as the digital signal needed lower power to get received by the cable head ends (and by a handful of rich people who went out and bought a HDTV set). Don't know if these stations were commercial or PBS.

[asynchronousman]

Originally Posted by Carmine

Our Detroit PBS station (WTVS-56) has been off-the-air since mid-November. They claim that the tower was damaged in a storm (although I can recall no storm during that time which could have damaged an antenna tower).

Read the story here:

I personally think they are just trying to get their demographic of filthy-rich PBS donaters to buy digital sets (they even mention this in their web explaination). The low-power signal they're now sending out is unwatchable. They were hitting people hard for donations two years ago to make the switch to digital, which I consider to be total BS... They're supposed to be educational TV for poor-folk (like me) without cable, but they "needed" to be digital two years ago, before many of our for-profit stations even switched?

I smell a rat. I can't imagine any for-profit station being off the air for 6 weeks!

If I'm not mistaken, the history of non-commercial TV in Detroit isn't exactly STELLAR ON VHF OR UHF, and that station had had a rough go as a commercial outlet before that. There are other signals gong into Motown that can cut the mustard much better, even in Toronto. Then ther is a very real possiblility it was SABOTAGED (which'll get you over a half-dozen years in federal prison) and WTVS is using the opportunity to "catch up where it had been impossible to before"--you can name it catastophe politics if you like. The weather in that area is no slouch (next to a Great Lake), and a few winters can and WILL take down a tower if only in Novenber. The only place I've seen that were harsher was Mt. Washington out East where it resembles Siberia and they still transmit FM and even TV SOMEHOW. There was a ch 14 in Iowa with a 5 megawatt transmitter and a "Supertower" that came crashing down one night because RCA didn't design it's anti-icing properties correctly. It's identical twin fell the same day (here's a LINK to the website that tells this story). I think Jim Hawkins' site links to a tower disater site as I recall, I shall have to look it up for you later.

Steven

[Chad Hauris]

I know that analog UHF transmitters can take a ton of power to put out a puny signal. There are some UHF stations that are operating at 5 megawatts effective radiated power (this is transmitter output power X antenna gain). Even with an antenna gain of 50 times, which is common on UHF, the transmitter is drawing at least 100,000 watts off the AC line. Combine that with super expensive tubes and water cooling system headaches, there is a lot of incentive for UHF stations to get rid of that stuff and go for the solid state lower power consumption digital transmitters.

I am not saying it is truly in the public service to get rid of analog TV but I can see how a station would be tempted to do it.

[Cleve]

Originally Posted by Carmine

Our Detroit PBS station (WTVS-56) has been off-the-air since mid-November. They claim that the tower was damaged in a storm (although I can recall no storm during that time which could have damaged an antenna tower).

Read the story here:

I personally think they are just trying to get their demographic of filthy-rich PBS donaters to buy digital sets (they even mention this in their web explaination). The low-power signal they're now sending out is unwatchable. They were hitting people hard for donations two years ago to make the switch to digital, which I consider to be total BS... They're supposed to be educational TV for poor-folk (like me) without cable, but they "needed" to be digital two years ago, before many of our for-profit stations even switched?

I smell a rat. I can't imagine any for-profit station being off the air for 6 weeks!

In Rochester NY, WXXI, the PBS station headquarters, is like a palace, and far newer, more luxurious and spacious than Rochester's commercial network affiliate stations. I used to donate money to PBS, but when I saw the inside of the facility, I was disgusted. I say pull the tax dollar life support plug and let them make a living like everyone else - The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, and the History Channel have ALL found business models that work for them.

[old_tv_nut]

From the 2004 TV and Cable Factbook:
WTVS authorized ERP (peak) is 1.55 Megawatts, channel 56, located at 26945 W 11 Mile Road, Southfield. WTVS-DT authorized ERP (average) is 200 kilowatts max, channel 43, located at 20932 Myers Road, Oak Park.

From the FCC database: WTVS-TV ERP is 2.09 MW, WTVS-DT is 200 kW.
The towers themselves are owned by CBS or Viacom.

I would guess they are NOT using a solid state transmitter for digital (too expensive), but don't know.

According to their web site, the temporary analog signal also is being broadcast from Oak Park (don't know details of what tower or antenna they might be using - but if they went on air immediately they must have had a backup prepared).

If you read their explanation of what part of the line is damaged, it is at the top of the tower, a difficult place to get to and sabotage, so I would scratch that theory. I'd also bet they are waiting for inspection to determine if there's a manufacturing/installation defect that they can charge back to the supplier.

[Chad Hauris]

Originally Posted by Clevanator

In Rochester NY, WXXI, the PBS station headquarters, is like a palace, and far newer, more luxurious and spacious than Rochester's commercial network affiliate stations. I used to donate money to PBS, but when I saw the inside of the facility, I was disgusted. I say pull the tax dollar life support plug and let them make a living like everyone else - The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, and the History Channel have ALL found business models that work for them.

This may be a little off the topic, but when I see this kind of subject come up I like to state that not all public stations are high-on-the-hog or palatial.
I work for a public radio station (not public TV): there are two full time staff TOTAL....total staff budget for salaries for the whole station is around $60,000 or less.

We are a no frills, no fluff NPR afffiliate station that still uses some 1970's era equipment and has community volunteers for our music programs. Our budget comes about 85-90% from pledges from listeners and 10-15% from a Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant.

Just wanted to put in my two cents that there are public stations that are making it on the contributions of listeners and are not wasteful or fancy.

[asynchronousman]

The LAST station of the six full-power VHFs here to go digital was the FOX station (KTRV TV 12/DT 13) last month. The one most vociferous at first was KBCI TV 2 (CBS). Then Fisher Communications (not the audio company but the original grain millers) bought them. Bingo. We know quite certainly the DT is on 28 and hear it much more than on Belo's KTVB TV 7. Hey, Belo! It's channel twentysomething, and how many of your would-be viewers are looking at 7 for "channel 7.2"??? KBCI (CBS DT 28), KAID (PBS multichannel DT 24 I think), KNIN (UPN 9, DT 10) and KTRV FOX 12 (DT 13) all openly tell us where to tune it. That's 67% of the Nampa-Boise-Caldwell metro signals.

The Boise State University Radio Network is large in relation to the five-station TV network of Idaho Public TV (State Dept. of ED run), but I ceased to give them funds when the director sent me a email babbling about how they were planning to take the AM stereo 730/AM 1450/FM ??.? "Idaho's Jazz Station" network IBOC digital on the AMs, then that Twin Falls is using the Real Media feed (15 second delay) anyway and it's NOT stereo, and probably because they lease it from Clear Channel. I think that would screw the listeners of Radio Bilingua over the Spanish Radio Universidad portion on Saturdays as there is some great Spanish language music, educational programs and old-school soul going down so what's the point? I wouldn't miss all the "trance" music on the student blocks at night (speed and death metal, well, he hehehe) (Beavis, this stuff kicks ass!)

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by Clevanator

In Rochester NY, WXXI, the PBS station headquarters, is like a palace, and far newer, more luxurious and spacious than Rochester's commercial network affiliate stations. I used to donate money to PBS, but when I saw the inside of the facility, I was disgusted.

Maybe they felt that the rich donors wouldn't want to donate money to a station that looked like the Channel 62 in Wierd Al Yankovec's movie "UHF".

[Sandy G]

Yeah, but I would have....They looked like they had big fun at Weird Al's station.....-Sandy G.

[asynchronousman]

The engineer was out of this world hee hee