[BC] WSPA stuff and digital

[Powell Way]

On Mar 3, 2009, at 12:06 AM, Scott Fybush wrote:
> 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.)
>

Tell her to get better really soon!

>
> 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?
>

Well, WSPA does have the WSPA signal on WYCW's 62.2. NOW they claimed 
they were turning OFF WYCW's analog on February 17, but they are 
running analog with instructions on how to set up your set top box. 
Hey, why not put the WSPA programming there until you get back up with 
the full time digital signal on Hogback mountain? I would expect they 
are NOT putting an analog signal up there again. At least when the 
towerS fell, actually folded over, the main tower took out the 
auxiliary one. At least it didn't get WSPA-FM's tower. I think Entercom 
is glad of that. I don't know if Entercom's tower is robust enough to 
temporarily host for a digital antenna.  I just wish these VHF digital 
allocations didn't have flea power as opposed to the digital. Yes, the 
suburban and fringe areas on these are a lost cause.

I will have digital on 7,8,9,12 and 13 post transition. I likely will 
get none of them, or at the very best none of them on a reliable basis. 
And even if they got 500,000 watts, likely during any thunderstorm they 
would be useless. In the snow event ( HAH! 3 flakes here) we had what 
looked like a "reverse inversion" as all the UHF stations were 
attenuated. I could get the analog stuff barely, and for many hours not 
a TRACE of ANY digital signal except for the Greenwood PBS which 
normally comes in on a stub. It was pixel city and was unusable.  This 
does not bode well. This is with a UHF beam that's amplified. Of course 
it won't pick up any of the V digitals. I guess I will put up that new 
stacked conical I have. It did  a decent job on UHF to my surprise.

Powell

Powell