DirtyHarry

I It is typical because of the transition to ATSC 3.0. They are teaming up and sharing bandwidth. Here in Columbus, Sinclair operates three channels and most of them have been squeezed into two, but 53.3 is given a home on the Nexstar WCMH signal. All the Nexstar and Sinclair ATSC 3.0 signals are broadcasting from the former WWHO-TV signal on Channel 23. 1) Channel 28/Virtual 6 (WSYX) - ABC, Fox 28, This TV and another Diginet; 2) Channel 27/Virtual 28.1, 28.2 (WTTE) - TBD and Antenna TV; 3) Channel 27/Virtual 53.1, 53.2 (WWHO) - CW and Charge; 4) Channel 14/Virtual 4 (WCMH -Nexstar) - NBC plus a few other Diginets; 5) Channel 14/Virtual 53.3 (WWHO) - Comet; 6) Channel 23 - ATSC 3.0 signals from WSYX, WTTE, WCMH AND WWHO

Good for them. It costs money to change channels.

Wow! All that effort for an LPTV station?

Since the current PBS begathon is running, it puts things in a different perspective. You left significant money on the table and you turn around and beg money from me? Weigel might have wanted it for their LPTV.

It would have value to one of the Christian broadcasters, but I think that you could get that converted fairly easily.

I'm surprised that they didn't sell the license to one of the LPTV operators in Chicagoland. You'd think that somebody would want to buy it just to force their way on to cable.

I now see why I don't watch much TV anymore. Ugh.

The point is that it's not unprecedented for two stations to use the same branding in the same market.

Why not? Here in Columbus Channel 4 called its helicopter "Chopper 4." Channel 10 called theirs "SkyCam" or something like that. I guess SkyCam didn't have a very good ring to it so they started calling it "Chopper 10."

Does it really have a lousy signal? I know it's only 10 kw or something like that, but WKRC only has 15 KW or something like that and I don't hear a lot of complaining about their signal.

Spirit of Ohio (WSYX) still sounds good today.

Extremely short-sighted since so many people are cutting cable.

No PBS in Waco?

My viewing these days is about 80% OTT and 20% OTA. I cut the cable last year and never looked back. I wonder how they're managing all the bandwidth though. Tonight, a lot of people in Ohio were watching Newsmax because of the town hall with JD Vance and Renacci. Seems like a real waste of bandwidth to be sending all those bits to everybody's home individually. I would imagine they have some kind of software available where they only have to send them once and they go to everybody watching Newsmax without having to send separate packets?

Sinclair needs to go back to using "WHO 53" for WWHO. I always thought that was pretty catchy.

Same reason WBNS invested millions in a slick new newsroom and why Sears and Kmart were closing newly remodeled stores. You spiff it up to make it pretty to sell.

Depends - abc6onyourside.com is easy to remember even though if it is a little unwieldy, because they've been using that slogan off and on for 30 years for more. They used to use wsyx6.com, which also isn't bad. (The domain for the Fox station myfox28columbus.com is not as easy but you can get there with a little guessing.) Likewise, 10tv.com, local12.com, nbc4i.com, wlwt.com, wishtv.com, wthr.com and several others are very easy to remember. What they have in common is they reinforce a station slogan or nickname, legendary call letters (after 74 years, people know WLWT) or call letters that mean something. If you live in Indianapolis, you will know the WTHR call letters because THR means Channel 13, the call letters are 45 years old and the station is top rated as opposed to being the 9th ranked UHF station. Likewise, SYX means "6" and that's easy enough. Adding "my" to the beginning also isn't bad and neither is "your." The domain for one of the LPTVs here is yourtv22.com, which isn't bad. They also have their domain name up on each of their sub channels when they flash their station ID at the top of each hour.

Faux News hasn't had a good pulse on its viewership since they ran off Roger Ailes. They think the average Faux News viewer worships the ideas of Bill Krystal, the late Charles Krauthammer and the rest of the neocon/globalist contingent, but that has never been the case. Faux's viewership has more sympathies with Rush Limbaugh and Trump than any of the Washington military industrial complex. By putting their thumb on the scale to try and swing the election, they urinated off a big chunk of their viewers. I haven't watched them since the election and I don't intend to. I need Washington propaganda from the right even less than I need it from the left.

But you still have to pay the bills. I'm just throwing numbers out, but let's say that internet bandwidth costs you four times as much as every cost you have to incur to get out your product out OTA. Unless the revenue is also there by being able to sell to advertisers a way to focus their advertising message more efficiently, it sounds like a shaky proposition. Maybe the revenue will be there in the future, but is it there now? And do they want to cannibalize their less costly form of delivery for something that costs them more? I've become hooked on these free video streaming services, particularly Pluto and Tubi. (That's also why I'm also down on broadcast TV.) For now, the ads are very reasonable. But because of what we've discussed, I wonder if these services are making any kind of a profit or will in the future We'll see how things shake out.

I never appreciated the NewsOn app until I tried watching on a real tv. It's pretty cool. Dumping a 70 (?) year old brand name like KX for Nexstars stupid web names is like when Macy's dumped 150 year old names like Lazarus because they thought everybody was so impressed with New York City and was dying to have a New York City department store in their town I asked some radio guys whether all the infrastructure that goes into broadcasting makes sense today cost-wise given that you can access everything on the web. You've got 2000 ft towers, tower crews and an entire plant you have to maintain just to get out a signal for people to listen to mp3s. (In radio, that is.) I was told that bandwidth is far more expensive than all the overhead you have to incur to get a broadcast signal out. Since video is far more bandwidth intensive than audio, I'm wondering what the numbers are.

"Lougee mistook Hoffman for a valet, deeply offending Hoffman." So what? Everyone's not a mystic. Maybe he wasn't dressed like an executive or didn't comport himself in a way that was executive like. Maybe he doesn't speak in a way that would convey that to someone. Or when we're dealing with the cashier at Walmart do we have to now assume that we are dealing with the CEO just so that we don't offend anybody?

Why, when you just did it?

Arguably, your peak years are in your 40s. It's all downhill after that. There are exceptions, but Shep isn't one of them.

I was curious about this whole digital phenomenon. It seems to me this whole infrastructure of building 1000 ft towers and lifting 20,000 lb antennas into place is very expensive and I wonder if the cost is sustainable given that I can broadcast with my smartphone if I wanted to. I asked some guys in radio about it and they still said it's cheaper to do it the conventional way than it is to go through the web using bandwidth. If this is true, I wonder how long all of these free video services are going to last given that video is more intensive than audio, bandwidth-wise.

I like Shep when he was in his prime on Fox during the 7:00 show. But now, Shepherd Smith is old and haggard looking. He's got that rode hard look these days. And then there is his severe case of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) that probably turned off most of his fans. It's too bad, because he was very good at one point.