• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Is something going on with WFME-TV?

E

EJM

For various reasons, I sometimes look at the MHz Networks site--including at its latest press releases. I just noticed that it issued one a couple of days ago saying that it would be carried soon in New York--"on WNYJ (formerly WFME)". In addition to the new call letters, the phrasing elsewhere suggests that MHz will be carried on the primary channel ("on digital broadcast on channel 66")--instead of on a subchannel. Finally, the WFME site (http://www.wfme.net) has on its homepage the text "Latest News - The Sale of WFME-TV" (although the link goes to the basic news section, where there are no further details). Either way, the FCC site still shows WFME-TV as the station's calls--and nothing is mentioned about a change on the station's Wikipedia page.

The MHz press release is at http://www.mhznetworks.org/about/pr...ess-mhz-worldview-mhz-international-mysteries.

(Updated because I had a bit more time to poke around the FCC site--and it looks like the WNYJ-TV calls were indeed requested by the current licensee very recently.)
 
Last edited:
cawasinnj said:
There's a website that is supposedly theirs. http://www.wnyj.org/ Not quite baked yet.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Going from the site, there's a mention of "Channel 66.1 - 66.4" (under "Over-The-Air"). It looks like, then, it will be on the primary channel plus a few subchannels--perhaps kind of like what MHz does here in the D.C. area, but on a smaller scale.
 
Since I'm in the D.C. area, I can't give any first-hand reports, but it looks like the change did happen today (Friday). Either way, the new calls (WNYJ-TV) are apparently in place, and the station's Wikipedia page has been updated. Supposedly, the MHz programming is only on the primary channel--while some changes were made to the subchannels. (WFME did also end up posting an official statement on its site to this effect.)
 
I wonder, what organization bought or is in the process of buying this channel? What will it become eventually? I'm sure they're not spending millions of dollars to buy a NYC-area TV station, carried in millions of homes, simply to rebroadcast a feed that's a subchannel on a few dozen PBS stations around the country.

So far the line up has been News and Documentaries in English from broadcasters around the world... Russia Today, CCTV China, Deutche Welle from Germany. I even saw a 15 min. Ethiopian newscast. (A female anchor with no tele-prompter, introducing several video packages of men in suits holding meetings about coffee prices, expanding the airport, etc.)

And by the way, I haven't seen a legal I.D. yet. They seem to just be running the MHz Worldview feed with no local inserts, not even a super of the call letters and city of license.

So are the other Family Stations TV outlets off the air or sold off as well? I think other than WFME-TV West Milford NJ, all the other Family Stations TV outlets are in or near California.

The last day the station was broadcasting the Family Stations' feed, they had a super running every few minutes saying they'd be off the air on Nov. 1, they thanked viewers for their loyalty and they said they'd maintain a subchannel with the Family Radio Eastern Time Zone audio. I'm watching on cable so I haven't checked the over-the-air station to see if that's 66's only subchannel.
 
I suspect it's a deal like KCSM has, where the non-profit (in this case, Family Stations) continues to own it, but the speculator pays the operating costs and gets some share of auction revenue. For KCSM in San Francisco, the station gets $900k/year to operate the station for up to 4 years, and then gets 63.5% of any auction revenue. The speculator gets the other 36.5%.

- Trip
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom