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ABC affiliate in Tupelo/Columbus to shut down

I am so glad I don't live in that area anymore; central Mississippi was horrible for quality OTA broadcasts. I was in Grenada which put me in the Greenwood-Greenville DMA, but I could never pick up anything from there during the analog years and only WABG-DT after the switchover. I had much better reception of MPB from Oxford and WTVA from Tupelo, but WKDH, WLOV and WCBI were non-existent, despite me being in the main coverage area for all of them (meaning I could never get waivers for distants via satellite.)

I don't think WKDH ever broadcast at full authorized power in analog OR digital because I never saw a whiff of them, even from mountaintops.

I know their antenna is on the WTVA tower, so if the LMA agreement ended I'm betting so did the lease on the tower site. That may explain the shut down.
 
WKDH is a fairly regular visitor here in Germantown. They are not as common as WLOV, which I can get at some level most nights, but they're not that hard. WTVA, however, is not that common; that's likely a function of being VHF. In any event, WKDH going dark will clear off channel 45.

By far, the most difficult signal to get from the region is WMAB-10. Back in the analog days, its channel 2 transmitter was very common here, and was seen via E-skip over much of the country. I think that now as a DT, I have only seen it twice.

But I am not a very serious TV DXer.

DE
 
The people in Columbus can still get ABC33/40 on cable out of Tuscaloosa. WKDH was local ABC for Tupelo and Columbus, but Columbus is in ABC 33/40's Tuscaloosa transmitter's (WCFT) coverage area. I have an Aunt in Columbus that has cable and this is what I found tuning across the dial on cable.
 
WTVA is taking the same route as WDAM, WLOX, and WXXV. Starting on September 1, WTVA will be affiliated with ABC on 9.2 and NBC on 9.1. If you remember WLOX is ABC on 13.1 and CBS on 13.2, WXXV is Fox on 25.1 and NBC on 25.2, and WDAM is NBC on 7.1 and ABC on 7.2
 
As I've said in another thread, here's my theory on this one:

First, note that WTVA and WKDH have interlocking ownership -- WTVA's owners are relatives of WKDH's.

(either that, or there are two unrelated families of Spains in Tupelo, both rich enough to buy TV stations. Uh, right.)

So, my theory is:

- Move the WKDH programming to WTVA's 9.2. (actually, they could probably use 45.1 over the WTVA transmitter)
- Suspend the operation of WKDH.
- When the FCC holds the incentive auction, offer WKDH's channel to the Commission for auction.
- Modify the WTVA and WKDH licenses to specify sharing of the same channel. WTVA and WKDH would *both* be licensed to operate on RF channel 8. They would operate as separate subchannels on the same transmitter, but each would continue to hold its own license -- and each would receive must-carry protection.

They'd continue to collect all of the revenue that used to come from operating two stations. But they'd lose the expense of operating the channel 45 transmitter. And, they'd collect a share of the incentive auction proceeds. Really the only significant downside would be the limitations on HD picture quality (due to limited bandwidth) and on the ability to add any more subchannels.
 
Supposedly, WLOX is providing satellite companies with a HD backhaul feed of CBS.

Does WTVA plan to provide ABC in HD using this method for the Tupelo-Columbus market?
 
richllewis said:
The people in Columbus can still get ABC33/40 on cable out of Tuscaloosa. WKDH was local ABC for Tupelo and Columbus, but Columbus is in ABC 33/40's Tuscaloosa transmitter's (WCFT) coverage area. I have an Aunt in Columbus that has cable and this is what I found tuning across the dial on cable.
Click to expand...

Back in the analog days it was not that difficult to snag WCFT off the air with a modest outdoor antenna in Columbus, from what I've been told. They've historically had enough viewers to include the border counties (Monroe, Lowndes, Kemper and possibly Oktibbeha) in their weather warnings/forecasts. Whether that still holds true or not in the digital age is anyone's guess. The digital's 41 dBu contour manages to reach (in theory) Columbus, Aberdeen and almost all the way to West Point, so it may be possible with a good directional setup.

And while I can't speak for true local WCBI, I'd take the secondhand scraps of weather from James Spann & crew at ABC 33/40 any day over those folks at WTVA, whose idea of storm tracking when I lived there was training an HD camera onto a laptop's screen and broadcasting that. That's if they could be bothered to break into programming at all.

Finally, why do we even have stations broadcasting in HD, if they're going to cram all this extra crap onto the subchannels? It's bad enough when they run weather radar on a single sub, but two HD feeds on one transmitter? Give me a break. It'll look like crap. I know it does, I've seen it, and nothing can be done about it short of feeding fibre direct to all the cablecos to bypass the crappy picture they're broadcasting. So why not just shut down broadcasting all together if they're not going to provide a quality product? :mad:
 
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