Cable TV at Hotels

[wxctintern]

I know we've had discussion about cable tv at hotels before, but I want to bring it up again because I want to bring up an issuse that I observed at the Gateway Conference Center Holiday Inn in Bethlehem, PA. With some of their own changes they carry part of Service Electric's CableLine Up. My complaint is not including the Hotel Barker Channel and the Public Access Station, there were 37 channels on the hotel's cable. And of the 37, two of those were dupilicate network affilates. They had both Philly's WB 17 and NYC's WB 11 on the lineup. And they had both Philly's FOX 29 and NYC's FOX 5. I understand that on the regular Service Electric Cable they have the dupilicate affiliates, but the hotel should be different since they're only offering their guests 37 channels. It's also interesting to note that they carry WWOR for UPN instead of Philly's WPSG/57. And although I think it only shows infomercials for Satan, they don't carry Bethlehem licensed WBPH-TV/60. Here is the cable tv lineup at the hotel:

2 Public Access
3 KYW CBS (3) - Philly
4 WPHL WB (17) - Philly
5 WTXF FOX (29) - Philly
6 WPVI ABC (6) - Philly
7 TBS
8 WFMZ IND (69) - Allentown
9 WWOR UPN (9) - NYC
10 WCAU NBC (10) - Philly
11 WPIX WB (11) - NYC
12 WLVT PBS (39) - Allentown
13 WNYW FOX (5) - NYC
14 QVC
15 CNN
16 ESPN
17 USA
18 MTV
19 VH-1
20 History Channel
21 Holiday Inn Barker Channel
22 Comcast Sports Net: Philly
23 HBO
24 HBO2
25 HBO Comedy
26 ESPN2
27 FOX News
28 Disney Channel
29 ABC Family
30 TNT
31 Headline News
32 The Weather Channel
33 CNBC
34 Univision (Don't know if this was the national feed or Philly's WUVP/65)
35 A&E
36 Nickelodeon
37 Travel Channel
38 AMC
39 Women's Entertainment
40 Spike TV
42 *Access to the Hotel's Movies and XXX Movies*. (They cost so much more than the Pay-Per-View Movies we have at home).

 

[KMRichards]

> I know we've had discussion about cable tv at hotels before,
> but I want to bring it up again because I want to bring up
> an issuse that I observed at the Gateway Conference Center
> Holiday Inn in Bethlehem, PA. With some of their own changes
> they carry part of Service Electric's CableLine Up. My
> complaint is not including the Hotel Barker Channel and the
> Public Access Station, there were 37 channels on the hotel's
> cable. And of the 37, two of those were dupilicate network
> affilates. They had both Philly's WB 17 and NYC's WB 11 on
> the lineup. And they had both Philly's FOX 29 and NYC's FOX
> 5. I understand that on the regular Service Electric Cable
> they have the dupilicate affiliates, but the hotel should be
> different since they're only offering their guests 37
> channels.

My observation is that when cable systems are used for any hotel, there will be no channel shuffling other than eliminating a channel or two for the hotel's in-house "barker" channel, as you noted.

I doubt any cable system will take on channel shuffling for a hotel, and it is also doubtful that a hotel will undertake to shuffle channels. The reality is that they don't have any responsibility to provide a "full lineup" of channels, and the cost to do so is probably not justified given that most people don't watch more than the Big Four, CNN, ESPN, and HBO.

That said, I have stayed in hotels where, due to affiliate switches since they had set up their system, the NBC station was missing because it was on the cable channel pre-empted by the hotel for HBO (a complaint to the corporate office got me a $20 discount on my next stay); where, due to the in-room set being misprogrammed, I got nothing but local stations, public access, and home shopping channels (that was part of a multi-problem fiasco, and I got a full refund from that chain's corporate office); and, on the other side of the coin, one hotel I stay at regularly on business trips has had the cable company equip every room with their set-top decoder for full 70-channel analog service, including HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime.

The channel lineup you posted isn't all that bad for a hotel. I suspect that the two missing channels (WPSG and WBPH) are carried on the same cable channel numbers as their broadcast channels, which is one of the options under the FCC must-carry rules.
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[rugrats1]

Recently, when I attended Comic Con in San Diego earlier this month, I stayed at a Motel 6 in Chula Vista. They had about 24 or so channels in their lineup. Don't know the exact positions, but the locals included:

NBC: KNSD 7/39 (at the hotel, on cable channel 2)
ABC: KGTV ch.10 (on 10)
CBS: KFMB ch.8 (on 8)
Fox: XETV ch.6 (on 6)
UPN: KCOP ch.13 (on 13) -- odd that this hotel offered LA's UPN instead of XHUPN ch.49; this channel was picked up off-air, meaning a very snowy picture.
WB: not available (KSWB ch.69 was SD's UPN)
PBS: n/a (KPBS ch.15 was the local PBS)
Spanish: no Univision, Telemundo or Telefutura at the motel, but there was Televisa's XEWT ch.12, which offered the best shows from Univision and the 4 Televisa networks.

Also, among the cable channels offered was cartoon Network, but it was the eastern feed. I found it funny for "Adult Swim" to start at 8PM instead of the normal 11PM.

 

[fybush]

> That said, I have stayed in hotels where, due to affiliate
> switches since they had set up their system, the NBC station
> was missing because it was on the cable channel pre-empted
> by the hotel for HBO (a complaint to the corporate office
> got me a $20 discount on my next stay); where, due to the
> in-room set being misprogrammed, I got nothing but local
> stations, public access, and home shopping channels (that
> was part of a multi-problem fiasco, and I got a full refund
> from that chain's corporate office); and, on the other side
> of the coin, one hotel I stay at regularly on business trips
> has had the cable company equip every room with their
> set-top decoder for full 70-channel analog service,
> including HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime.

Not that I'd admit to being this much of a geek, but on trips where taping local TV has been a priority, I've known of people who have called in advance to try to determine what's on the hotel TV before making reservations accordingly. I'd be very likely to become a very regular customer of any chain that promised - and delivered - a full local cable lineup in its rooms. (Some cities are better than others in this respect; here in Rochester, I know many hotels that carry the full Time Warner lineup, while I've yet to find a single hotel in Las Vegas that doesn't roll its own TV, usually pretty poorly.)

A misprogrammed in-room set is rarely a dealbreaker for me, since I'm usually traveling with a VCR that has its own tuner. It's sometimes quite interesting to see what ELSE is on the cable!

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[bhayes1016]

Last hotel I stayed at was a Best Western in suburban Nashville. They had about 45 channels, with all locals plus Showtime and the common "basic" channels. I think it was through Comcast.

There's a reason why the Vegas hotels have subpar TV lineups...they don't want you in your room watching TV...they want you down in the casino.

 

[james32746]

Disney World actually runs it's own cable TV facility for it's hotels and campground (I think Comcast runs the backbone for it because they had one of their HDTV cable boxes displayed at Epcot that I saw once).

Anyways, the channel selection was basically:

Local Orlando area channels (all of them-minus the low power stations)

All Disney owned cable networks.

MSNBC

BET on Jazz

Radio Disney (audio simulcast)

Disney World Information Channels

NHK

Deuschte Welle (excuse the spelling).

Open Captioned duplicate channels

and I forgot what else is there.



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James Westerfield</P>

 

[vtjazy]

> Disney World actually runs it's own cable TV facility for
> it's hotels and campground (I think Comcast runs the
> backbone for it because they had one of their HDTV cable
> boxes displayed at Epcot that I saw once).
>
> Anyways, the channel selection was basically:
>
> Local Orlando area channels (all of them-minus the low power
> stations)
>
> All Disney owned cable networks.
>
> MSNBC
>
> BET on Jazz
>
> Radio Disney (audio simulcast)
>
> Disney World Information Channels
>
> NHK
>
> Deuschte Welle (excuse the spelling).
>
> Open Captioned duplicate channels
>
> and I forgot what else is there.
>

in 2002, on the disney cruise line, they had WABC, WNBC, all the disney owned cable channels, and a light smattering of other channels, along with the standard hotel/boat information channels.