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At one time, Columbus cable (sorry, don't remember which one), I want to say around 1980, had a "wild-card" channel which carried locally pre-empted network programs from other markets. That's been over 40 years ago, it was one weekend when I stayed there, and my memory is kind of foggy, but I'm almost positive WAKR-23 Akron ABC was one of them, as well as WTRF-7 Wheeling CBS. I could be conflating WTRF with WHIO. Here's what the 1982 Broadcasting Yearbook showed for one of the systems:
Got to wonder if WCMH had issues with NBC being brought in from another market.
Hard to say. I do know at that time, WCBS from NYC was carried far beyond anything that would have been possible OTA, and I don't know if they were on satellite. WCBS even shows as being carried on a cable system in Catlettsburg, Kentucky:
Seems kind of pointless to carry a third CBS affiliate, in that they already had semi-local WCHS as well as WKYT from Lexington. Lexington stations aggressively pursued cable carriage throughout far eastern Kentucky throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and Kentucky viewers very much disliked the short shrift they got from Huntington-Charleston stations for Kentucky news coverage. It's also impossible to exaggerate the interest in UK sports (especially basketball) in eastern Kentucky. They "bleed Blue" all the way to the banks of the Ohio and the Big Sandy.
I have a vague memory of WCBS being listed in the Pittsburgh TV Guide as available on cable after 1 AM. For a time in the 1980s, cable systems were permitted to carry out-of-market stations in the very early-morning hours.
WPIX was carried on cable all over the place, including Huntington WV and Jackson OH. Don't know how they distributed it.
The "WCBS" carriage was all just overnight after WPIX or WOR signed off - Eastern Microwave switched its receiver to the 24-hour WCBS signal and fed that down the line in place of WPIX/WOR.
The "WCBS" carriage was all just overnight after WPIX or WOR signed off - Eastern Microwave switched its receiver to the 24-hour WCBS signal and fed that down the line in place of WPIX/WOR.
I would never have thought of that. While I'm old enough to remember when TV stations signed off, I didn't think in terms of WPIX or WOR freeing up microwave spectrum for WCBS. Makes sense.
Just out of curiosity, how far from NYC did the microwave links for WPIX and WOR get? And dumb question, were there any limits beyond which microwave would no longer have been feasible? Could a superstation have potentially gotten from coast to coast via microwave? I know the Los Angeles independents got as far east as New Mexico, and the Salt Lake City network stations were carried on various cable systems all the way from North Dakota to Nevada (and possibly Arizona?).
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