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Okay, I'll ask: What GRAVE SIN did Bristol County, MA commit?

K

kramie13

Banned
Over the weekend I stayed at a hotel in Hebron, NH. Hebron is in Grafton County, NH, which is part of the Burlington, VT television market. The hotel television was tied to the town's cable television provider, Atlantic Broadband. I was amazed to find out that I could watch any of the major Boston stations (WBZ, WCVB, WHDH, WBTS, WFXT), as well as TWO Portland, ME stations (WCSH and WGME). These residents live 100 miles away from Boston and can watch their local news on cable, yet residents in Mansfield and Easton, MA, who live less than 30 miles from Boston, are forced to watch NBC and FOX programming from WJAR and WNAC. If they subscribe to satellite or an IPTV service like YouTube TV, they won't receive any Massachusetts stations at all!

I don't think there is anywhere else in the United States where a resident is living less than 30 miles from their state capital but their pay-TV provider sends them stations from another state. I grew up in Norton. My parents still live there. I know a lot of people that live in that area. They all align with Boston. Did Bristol County, MA commit a grave sin when television was the new, hip thing? And what penance has to be performed to be able to fix this?
 
Comcast is using the excuse that NBC10 Boston which was a new station is not a significantly viewed station is why it is not on in Bristol County. It has been on the air for 2 years. I think NBC management should look into this considering they own the station which is in MA and is not seen on a cable system they are part of in a county that is in MA. Comcast in Bristol County has Boston 25 only on a Standard Definition Channel (22) . It is blacked out only when Fox national programming is airing. Boston 25 local news is shown. WLVI CW56 is carried only in SD. WBZ, WCVB, WHDH and WSBK are carried in HD. To get around this, I set up some rabbit ears and can receive NBC10 Boston over the air in Easton.
 
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Advertisers and media, for some wonky, weird reason, decided to overlap the region with Providence due to the proximity between the two areas long ago, so by default, the news stations in Providence decided to cater to them instead. I believe that residents have a right to choose which area stations they want to watch.
 
mnw1890 said:
Comcast is using the excuse that NBC10 Boston which was a new station is not a significantly viewed station is why it is not on in Bristol County.
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The fact that NBC Boston is carried in Hebron, NH on a non-Comcast system outside the Boston DMA debunks this "excuse". It's also available to Spectrum subscribers in Orange, MA when that community is in Franklin County, part of the Springfield DMA. WWLP is also carried there.

Comcast in Bristol County has Boston 25 only on a Standard Definition Channel (22) . It is blacked out only when Fox national programming is airing. Boston 25 local news is shown. WLVI CW56 is carried only in SD. WBZ, WCVB, WHDH and WSBK are carried in HD. To get around this, I set up some rabbit ears and can receive NBC10 Boston over the air in Easton.
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WFXT has been on cable in Bristol County, MA since at least the early 90s. It wasn't until 2007 that the station became subject to network programming blackouts. Yet it's still available (at least the local news and syndicated programming) 12 years later despite an ownership change and rising retransmission fees.

We live in a time where there are many more television options. Yet because the television market boundaries don't always match the state lines, services like YouTube TV and PlayStation Vue won't give you in-state local news depending on where you live, almost "forcing" the resident to subscribe to traditional cable. Yeah, stations are available for free OTA, but the recent repack of OTA channels has made it harder to receive some stations. There should be a law that requires television providers, whether it be cable, satellite, or IPTV, to provide a subscriber with local stations originating from the state they live in if they carry local news.
 
kramie13 said:
Over the weekend I stayed at a hotel in Hebron, NH. Hebron is in Grafton County, NH, which is part of the Burlington, VT television market. The hotel television was tied to the town's cable television provider, Atlantic Broadband. I was amazed to find out that I could watch any of the major Boston stations (WBZ, WCVB, WHDH, WBTS, WFXT), as well as TWO Portland, ME stations (WCSH and WGME). These residents live 100 miles away from Boston and can watch their local news on cable, yet residents in Mansfield and Easton, MA, who live less than 30 miles from Boston, are forced to watch NBC and FOX programming from WJAR and WNAC. If they subscribe to satellite or an IPTV service like YouTube TV, they won't receive any Massachusetts stations at all!

I don't think there is anywhere else in the United States where a resident is living less than 30 miles from their state capital but their pay-TV provider sends them stations from another state. I grew up in Norton. My parents still live there. I know a lot of people that live in that area. They all align with Boston. Did Bristol County, MA commit a grave sin when television was the new, hip thing? And what penance has to be performed to be able to fix this?
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I live a bit over 30 miles from Cheyenne, WY but am still in Wyoming and if i had cable tv(Spectrum in our town), I would get Cheyenne and Casper stations along with several Fort Collins and Denver stations. I would have 2 affiliates of each network.
 
I emailed NBC10 Boston to see if they can facilitate any resolution to this issue. The fact that they are owned by NBC and Comcast should be enough reason to get them on all Comcast systems in the Boston area. We should have a choice of NBC stations to watch. Honestly living in Bristol county, we should have all Boston stations. NBC10 Boston has a better newscast than WJAR Providence. The recent repack weakened my signal for NBC10 Boston over the air in Bristol County.
 
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mnw1890 said:
I emailed NBC10 Boston to see if they can facilitate any resolution to this issue. The fact that they are owned by NBC and Comcast should be enough reason to get them on all Comcast systems in the Boston area. We should have a choice of NBC stations to watch. Honestly living in Bristol county, we should have all Boston stations. NBC10 Boston has a better newscast than WJAR Providence. The recent repack weakened my signal for NBC10 Boston over the air in Bristol County.
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It is the FCC and the “must carry” rule that determines the “local” channels a cable system must carry. Part of the determination is based on the TV Market your county belongs to, based on Nielsen market definitions. If your county is part of the Providence TV market, the local stations from that market “block” coverage of Locals from other markets for nearly all network and syndicated programming.
 
This problem only affects NBC10 Boston, all other Boston stations are carried on Comcast in Bristol County. We have ABC, CBS and CW channels from Boston and Providence without any black outs on network and syndicated programs.
 
boogiebutters said:
Advertisers and media, for some wonky, weird reason, decided to overlap the region with Providence due to the proximity between the two areas long ago, so by default, the news stations in Providence decided to cater to them instead. I believe that residents have a right to choose which area stations they want to watch.
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Viewers can not pick the local stations if they reside in a DMA that has its own locals. Cable systems can add out of market signals, but have to black out network and syndicated shows their local stations have the rights to. They might also have to pay carriage fees to the outside stations, which is an added cost.
 
In this case, the cable system Comcast owns NBC which owns NBC10 Boston, carriage by Comcast in all of MA should not be an issue with this channel.
 
mnw1890 said:
In this case, the cable system Comcast owns NBC which owns NBC10 Boston, carriage by Comcast in all of MA should not be an issue with this channel.
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However, if the local NBC affiliate in the other DMA in MA, Springfield-Holyoke. And it would also require consent for the syndicated shows that the Boston NBC station carries if they granted exclusivity anywhere else.

There might also be an unfair trade practice were this done to the exclusion of other Boston stations... monopolistic practice.
 
A weird case is Brattleboro, VT. Windham County is at the edge of the Boston/Worcester DMA. Due to a political move (I think?), they carry WCAX-TV (CBS) channel 3 from Burlington along side WBZ-TV. Of the hotels/motels I've stayed at there, only one carried The NBC Boston channel as of mid-2017. One other motel (I think the Super 8 on US Route 5) only carried channels 4, 5, 7, 25 and 38. That was back when NBC was on channel 7. I don't believe anything on WCAX-TV was blacked out. Network programming was shown as usual. Comcast serves the town itself. I believe they used to carry channel 19 (ABC) from Adams, MA when that was around.
 
mnw1890 said:
This problem only affects NBC10 Boston, all other Boston stations are carried on Comcast in Bristol County. We have ABC, CBS and CW channels from Boston and Providence without any black outs on network and syndicated programs.
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NBC Boston is a low power station, so it doesn't qualify for must carry.
 
I don't think any commercial station affiliated with a Big 4 network exercises its must-carry option. Instead, they choose retransmission consent, which ensures they get paid for being carried on a subscription television service. Look at DirecTV - they've got disputes with Nexstar and Northwest Broadcasting that have lasted for over a month! Syracuse, NY DirecTV subscribers are without ABC and FOX. Binghamton, NY DirecTV subscribers are without ABC, NBC, and FOX.

As far as NBC Boston is concerned, I'm sure they rebranded to "NBC10 Boston" just to spite residents in Mansfield, Easton, etc. to let them know "you can't watch us, you have to watch that "foreign" NBC station". Which is a bit backwards considering that there would never be a retransmission dispute with NBC O&O's since Comcast is the parent company of NBC. They would want subscribers to watch their networks.
 
kramie13 said:
As far as NBC Boston is concerned, I'm sure they rebranded to "NBC10 Boston" just to spite residents in Mansfield, Easton, etc. to let them know "you can't watch us, you have to watch that "foreign" NBC station".
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You have an odd perspective on the way businesses come up with their branding. They certainly don't stoop to elementary-school playground-bully tactics, sticking out their collective corporate tongues and going "nyah-nyah-nyah-NYAH-nyah" at the residents of a bunch of suburbs. Get real.
 
CTListener said:
You have an odd perspective on the way businesses come up with their branding. They certainly don't stoop to elementary-school playground-bully tactics, sticking out their collective corporate tongues and going "nyah-nyah-nyah-NYAH-nyah" at the residents of a bunch of suburbs. Get real.
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They almost certainly ended up using NBC 10 due to a poor decision made in NY or Philly by someone who was unaware of the Providence / Boston market overlap, and unaware that many cable systems would be carrying both ch 10's. The 10 came from NBC Boston displacing the Comcast-owned NECN previously on 10 or 810 on many systems. They wanted a low number near WHDH's ch 7.

However another decision made from a distance had created another problem. That was the assumption that WNEU in Merrimack would adequately cover the Boston market, leading to the local protests and the involvement of Congressman Markey, provoked by WHDH's Ed Ansin.

So as a stop-gap, NBC converted the the existing low power Needham WTMU-LP to WBTS-LD and requested to use virtual channels 8-x, which was OK. However they once again didn't check the markets. 8-x could never be channel shared on a full power station - because of the small overlap with the Portland market where there is already WMTW 8-1. (Later they added WMFP for a better signal.)

So soon 8-x moves to Providence, but with call letters swapped to WYCN-LD, and WBTS-LD remains in Boston as 15-1.
 
channel99 said:
They almost certainly ended up using NBC 10 due to a poor decision made in NY or Philly by someone who was unaware of the Providence / Boston market overlap, and unaware that many cable systems would be carrying both ch 10's. The 10 came from NBC Boston displacing the Comcast-owned NECN previously on 10 or 810 on many systems. They wanted a low number near WHDH's ch 7.

However another decision made from a distance had created another problem. That was the assumption that WNEU in Merrimack would adequately cover the Boston market, leading to the local protests and the involvement of Congressman Markey, provoked by WHDH's Ed Ansin.

So as a stop-gap, NBC converted the the existing low power Needham WTMU-LP to WBTS-LD and requested to use virtual channels 8-x, which was OK. However they once again didn't check the markets. 8-x could never be channel shared on a full power station - because of the small overlap with the Portland market where there is already WMTW 8-1. (Later they added WMFP for a better signal.)

So soon 8-x moves to Providence, but with call letters swapped to WYCN-LD, and WBTS-LD remains in Boston as 15-1.
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Impressive. But still not buying that people who deal with the minutiae of television's technical and regulatory sides for a living are as clueless as you make them out to be, or that their actions in the wake of all this alleged mass stupidity would sink to the level of spiting viewers through branding., call letterspor anything else. It all seems like a fan-fic version of the broadcasting business.
 
CTListener said:
Impressive. But still not buying that people who deal with the minutiae of television's technical and regulatory sides for a living are as clueless as you make them out to be, or that their actions in the wake of all this alleged mass stupidity would sink to the level of spiting viewers through branding., call letterspor anything else. It all seems like a fan-fic version of the broadcasting business.
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Sorry, but they were that clueless - not malicious, not scheming - but would a logically thinking company have created this mess?

https://whdh.com/news/major-announcement-involving-nbc-and-whdh-tv/
https://www.broadcastingcable.com/n...roof-nbcs-new-oo-will-reach-all-boston-161599
https://www.bostonherald.com/2016/01/09/peacock-network-a-tough-foe-for-ansin/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...your-remote/zRfa8wxVs5e9va8OMK7gQL/story.html
https://www.universalhub.com/2016/speaking-boston-tv-signals
 
What's worse is that this isn't even the first time NBC has made this mistake. In San Francisco, when they left KRON and bought KNTV, they branded the station as "NBC 3" and got placement on channel 3 on cable. Of course, KCRA in Sacramento, which has substantial overlap with most of the San Francisco stations, was also an NBC station on 3. Confusion followed, and the station rebranded to "NBC 11" within a year.

- Trip
 
Losing WCVB in Bristol County

Comcast just announced today that WCVB Channel 5 will be removed from Bristol County on December 22. Get out the "rabbit ears"!!!!
 
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