[BC] Call Letters

[Scott Fybush]

Broadcast List USER wrote:
> May be silly, but it is real.  If you have spent 15 years branding 
> NBC-4, you have a real "New Coke" problem re-branding as NBC-48, but 
> still maintaining in the public's mind that NBC-4 and NBC-48 are the 
> same thing.
> 
> I really think they need to think long term and change their branding, 
> but I don't know of any considering it.  I'm sure their must be some, 
> but I don't know of any.

Forgive me for jumping in a bit late here - I've spent the day at the 
hospital with my wife, who underwent major intestinal reorganization 
this morning. (She's recovering as well as anyone could be expected to 
after having much of their guts excised...I think there's a broadcasting 
industry metaphor in there, but maybe it's just that I haven't slept 
since Saturday.)

In any event, I rather disagree with Chip's assertion that "it is real." 
  This debate has been playing out over on one of the message-board 
sites, and Doug Smith nailed it rather nicely, I think, when he pointed 
out that in a sense, TV receivers have been "remapping" for 70 years now.

There is, in other words, no physical reality to "channel 4." By 
convention, we've agreed - in the analog, OTA world - that "channel 4" 
means "66-72 MHz," and we've built mapping tables into our receivers 
that translate "channel 4" into "66-72 MHz."

I don't need to know that bit of behind-the-scenes mapping to watch 
"channel 4," though - any more than I need to know that the IP address 
of "oldradio.com" is 208.77.223.75 in order to look at pictures of old 
RCA transmitters.

And just as Barry and Chris have the flexibility to move "oldradio.com" 
to a different server with a different IP address if their internal 
needs require it, without needing to let me know that "208.77.223.75" 
has become, say, "208.54.126.15", PSIP and channel mapping provide TV 
broadcasters with a way to maintain a constant image to consumers across 
numerous distribution channels.

Two real-life examples:

1. That WSPA-TV tower that went down over the weekend in South Carolina 
took the WSPA-DT transmitter (RF channel 53, virtual channel 7) off the 
air. But Media General owns a second station in the market, WYCW, and 
they've put WSPA's programming on a subchannel of WYCW-DT. It happens 
that they're branding the subchannel as "62.2" for the moment, but 
there's nothing in the world to stop them from simply branding it as 
"7.1" and thus keeping "channel 7" on the air for viewers in Spartanburg 
and Greenville even if the "normal" WSPA-TV facility is dark. How is 
that not a good thing?

2. The FCC is now authorizing fill-in DTV translators to restore signal 
to areas where current analog viewers are predicted to lose digital 
coverage. I'm following one such example in Pittsburgh, where WTAE 
("channel 4" since 1958) will lose some of its analog coverage when it's 
left with only WTAE-DT on RF channel 51. So Hearst has applied for a 
fill-in WTAE-DT signal on RF channel 22 from the WQED tower in the 
middle of Pittsburgh. Isn't it far less confusing to the "normal" viewer 
to have their tuner simply display "4" without worrying about whether 
it's getting the signal from a transmitter at the old WTAE site or at 
the WQED tower?

> Anyway, the marketing people, with engineering on the same page, don't 
> want to do a THING to alter the branding of CBS-2.  It just amazes me.

And why would they want to alter the branding they've had since 1951? To 
a viewer in Los Angeles, "channel 2" means the local news and Katie 
Couric and David Letterman and CSI - it doesn't mean 54-60 MHz analog 
OTA, or QAM cable multiplex 82-4, or 647 MHz digital OTA, or whatever 12 
GHz frequency Dish or Direct are using to deliver the signal, or 
whatever 1.8 GHz channel their smart phone is using at any given moment 
when they're logged on to kcbstv.com.

Even if they need to know, very briefly, that watching "CBS 2" requires 
punching in "43" to find the signal on their set, as soon as they've 
done that once, what appears in the corner of the screen is not "43" 
but...yup, "2-1."

Yes, I understand the potential for antenna-related confusion. We're 
about to get slapped by it in my market, which has been all-UHF for 
digital but will have two Vs returning to their old frequencies 
post-transition.

Even there, though, the answer hasn't involved adding meaningless 
"channel 45" and "channel 58" references to an already overwhelming 
blast of information - instead, it's been reminders that "you need an 
antenna that can get both VHF and UHF."

Maybe this is an unusually sophisticated market, but the call center 
here (run by my station, WXXI, under an FCC grant) isn't logging many 
calls from viewers confused by this particular issue.

s