mvcg66b3r 97 Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 Two South Florida TV stations, Miami’s WPBT and WXEL in Boynton Beach, have agreed to merge into a new entity, South Florida PBS. The stations jointly announced the agreement Wednesday. “This agreement presents a unique opportunity to accomplish something truly profound for South Florida,” said James Patterson, vice chair of WXEL’s board of trustees, in a press release. “The combination of resources and talent at WXEL, WPBT2 and PBS, makes possible a new level of community involvement and leadership that will encourage young people to read and learn and expose them to cultural programming that will enrich their lives.” The two stations announced in June 2014 that they would embark on discussions about a merger. CPB contributed $150,000 to support planning behind the effort. http://current.org/2015/07/south-florida-tv-stations-announce-merger/ Will the two stations simulcast, or will they continue to air different programs? If it's the latter, and WXEL becomes secondary, OTA viewers from Fort Pierce to Jupiter (and satellite subscribers in the Palm Beach DMA) would lose access to first-run PBS programming. Contour Map: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=574906&map=Y&contour=Y&int=N&pop=N&incpop=&excpop=&z1=N&lprw=N&head=Y&asrn=&extras=1002232&cir=&circen=25.9586111111%2C-80.2119444444 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRolyPoly 1847 Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 This would make the first regional-PBS network in the state of Florida, since other areas really operate independently of each other (that's if you don't count WFSU 11 in Tallahassee and the semi-satellite WFSG 56 in Panama City). The other PBS-es are WSRE 23, WJCT 7, WUFT 5, WEDU 3, WUSF 16, WGCU 30/Cable 3, WUCF 24 and WLRN 17. The public independents are WDSC 15 and WEFS 68. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caliwxdude 252 Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 Will the two stations simulcast, or will they continue to air different programs? A simulcast is doubtful; they will likely retain separate program schedules. Consolidation of local PBS member stations has been going on for a while. Here in the Bay Area, KQED acquired San Jose PBS member station KQEH (then KTEH) and formed Northern California Public Broadcasting back in 2006. KQED has continued to program KQEH separate from KQED, branded as "KQED Plus." There is plenty of public television programming available to enable (and really require) separate schedules on both stations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvcg66b3r 97 Posted July 16, 2015 Author Share Posted July 16, 2015 A simulcast is doubtful; they will likely retain separate program schedules. Consolidation of local PBS member stations has been going on for a while. Here in the Bay Area, KQED acquired San Jose PBS member station KQEH (then KTEH) and formed Northern California Public Broadcasting back in 2006. KQED has continued to program KQEH separate from KQED, branded as "KQED Plus." There is plenty of public television programming available to enable (and really require) separate schedules on both stations. But KQED and KQEH are in the same market. These are separate markets, as I explained in the first post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkolsen 1679 Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 http://current.org/2015/07/south-florida-tv-stations-announce-merger/Will the two stations simulcast, or will they continue to air different programs? If it's the latter, and WXEL becomes secondary, OTA viewers from Fort Pierce to Jupiter (and satellite subscribers in the Palm Beach DMA) would lose access to first-run PBS programming.Contour Map: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=574906&map=Y&contour=Y&int=N&pop=N&incpop=&excpop=&z1=N&lprw=N&head=Y&asrn=&extras=1002232&cir=&circen=25.9586111111%2C-80.2119444444 A simulcast could be probable as they are two separate markets assuming they are the primary PBS affiliates for each market. A primary PBS station gets first dibs on programming while secondary stations have to work around/air programming at off hours. A perfect local example of primary/secondary affiliations would be Washington DC which has WETA (primary) and WHUT (secondary) where WETA airs programming first. But to make matters confusing MPT (the MD state wide primary PBS network across six transmitters) is carried in DC on cable and both WETA & WHUT are carried in Baltimore. So in both markets you basically have two choices on cable/satellite if you want to watch primetime PBS programming. I choose MPT because it's my state owned network, they broadcast in 1080i over 720p and finally WETA's HD program feed is different than the SD feed. There have been a few times where I've been asked to record something that aired exclusively on WETA that my parents saw aired at such and such a time where I set my DVR for the HD channel and find that the wrong program was recorded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkolsen 1679 Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Having trouble editing my post but one of the lines in the current.org article says that the merger would "virtually eliminate duplicate programming." Based on this line I would infer that they will be simulcasting and the areas where both channels are carried (WPBT looks like it's carried throughout the Palm Beach market on cable not sure about WXEL in Miami) one program stream on cable will be eliminated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NEOMatrix 1295 Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Don't forget the WPTO/WPTD/WCET triduum in Southwest Ohio. Even thought WPTO/WPTD are branded as "ThinkTV", the two stations are almost different in programming. WPTD is a primary PBS for Dayton, whereas WPTO served Cincinnati and Dayton but is secondary compared to WCET. That and they also have a KET transmitter on the Kentucky side of the Cincy Market. Except for KET, one consortium controls PBS in SW Ohio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NEOMatrix 1295 Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Does anyone see WVIZ and WNEO/WEAO combining in the near future? Granted, all three practically air mostly the same programming on the main subchannels, but I could see a ThinkTV/WCET-like consortium happening in the near future where WVIZ serves ALL of the Cleveland DMA as primary PBS and WNEO and WEAO are "split" (and hopefully finally move the transmitter closer to Youngstown). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rusty Muck 4170 Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 Does anyone see WVIZ and WNEO/WEAO combining in the near future? Granted, all three practically air mostly the same programming on the main subchannels, but I could see a ThinkTV/WCET-like consortium happening in the near future where WVIZ serves ALL of the Cleveland DMA as primary PBS and WNEO and WEAO are "split" (and hopefully finally move the transmitter closer to Youngstown). Well, do note that WVIZ is co-owned with WCPN and WCLV as ideastream. A merger of WNEO/WEAO (aka Western Reserve PBS) and Kent State's WKSU-FM is plausible IMO. They do share office space in downtown Akron at the former Akron studios for WKYC and have collaborated on different projects. But a Western Reserve PBS/ideastream merger... I have a hard time wrapping my head over that. If you were to tell me what **should** happen, WKSU and WCPN/WCLV need to merge, with WCLV's classical format moving to 90.3 and 104.9 becoming a WKSU repeater - slightly superfluous in a way because of an existing WKSU repeater in Norwalk. WKSU has long been seen as a stronger NPR member station, in part because WCPN didn't come into existence until 1984 (Cleveland's infamous 1978 default silenced predecessor WBOE-FM permanently, leaving WKSU as the default NPR affiliate for Northeastern Ohio for many years). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NEOMatrix 1295 Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 Come to think of it, I could see Western Reserve PBS buying WKSU AND WYSU. WKSU can become WEAO-FM and WYSU can become WNEO-FM. IIRC, Western Reserve PBS is joint consortorium run by Kent State, the University of Akron, and Youngstown State. Back to South Florida, I could see WXEL and WPBT simulcasting since they're both in two different markets. Granted there might be some pretty good signal overlap especially near Ft. Lauderdale but that's up to WPBT/WXEL to determine if it's feasible to have one stream cover two markets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRolyPoly 1847 Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 I'm curious as to what subchannels will be offered by both WPBT and WXEL. Will it be simulcasted or will both offer different subchannels for the market? I'm just curious. I see South Florida PBS as a similar equivalent to WFSU/WFSG in Tallahassee/Panama City, Twin Cities Public Television and others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.