If it's more a matter of not being able to sustain a free-standing station, relaying WFSU/WFSG sounds like possibly the best solution.
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Licensee of WSRE ends PBS affiliation for the Pensacola TV market.
- Thread starter Y2kTheNewOldies
- Start date
If it's more a matter of not being able to sustain a free-standing station, relaying WFSU/WFSG sounds like possibly the best solution.
Next month is WSRE switching to Educational independent.
I wonder how they plan to fund it. They decertified their foundation. So that money is gone. Fans of PBS won't pay for generic educational programming. The state cut funding. So it really comes down to the college paying for everything.
If it were a larger TV market, a more heavily populated area, there might be room for an independent public TV station, with PBS coming from WEIQ Mobile, but the area simply isn't that big, with diverse-enough programming demand.
Both PBS and NPR are cutting their programming fees and making deals in other markets. As I said earlier, this sounds like it's more about politics than cutting costs.
I assume the lawsuit by the foundation is still ongoing. I don't see any reporting of a settlement.
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The new schedule as an educational independent station is out. There will be educational shows for kids and programs produced for Florida. Pensacola will have to get access to Alabama Public TV aka WEIQ 42.
This will be the first time Mobile to have an educational independent station available through over the air.
I'm sorry, all of that stuff is not what people who have been used to a PBS station are looking for.
Just throwing this out there, would it violate any Alabama state mandates for public TV, to make WSRE a satellite of WEIQ (and, by extension, the entire Alabama public TV network)? It might be kind of apples and oranges (or Granny Smiths and Pink Ladys), but the transmitters for Louisville's two PBS/KET stations are located across the river in Indiana.
WSRE can't air PBS programming without an agreement to carry it. WSRE obviously doesn't want to carry PBS programming.
Agreed. The question will be if funding is available long enough for most of these programs to gain an audience over the long term. If not, you can probably kiss WSRE-TV, whether or not it uses PBS programming, goodbye, probably within the next two years, if not sooner.
They are going to have to decide whether to add the in-state WFSU or the in-time zone APT.
The hotels especially Sandestin in Miramar Beach carries WFSU (via WFSG) while houses and hotel in the neighboring Destin carries WSRE. So Pensacola should able to carry WFSG through cable and satellite.
SanDestin/30a is Walton county in the Panama City market so WFSG/WFSU is local. Destin is Okaloosa County so they already get WEIQ on Dish/DirecTV/Uverse and Yahoo TV.
Alabama Public Television doesn’t have a useable OTA signal in any Florida cities and has never exercised Must Carry on cable in Florida.
It would be interesting to see if WFSU works something out with Alabama Public Television to serve Pensacola and Fort Walton.
Also, I assume WSRE will now be competing with APTV. Will WSRE ask for Must Carry in Mobile county?
Alabama Public Television doesn’t have a useable OTA signal in any Florida cities and has never exercised Must Carry on cable in Florida.
It would be interesting to see if WFSU works something out with Alabama Public Television to serve Pensacola and Fort Walton.
Also, I assume WSRE will now be competing with APTV. Will WSRE ask for Must Carry in Mobile county?
Were they not on cable in Mobile county before? I just assumed they were on cable in the entire DMA up until all this stuff started happening. I've only ever had DirecTV and Riviera Utilities and both carried them in Baldwin County, so I figured the same applied across the bay. Of course they dropped off DTV a while back and Riviera Cable shut down completely, so…