Oh, man...I created the WEKA article.
Nooooo!
Et Tu Brute?
Jokes aside, I'm not really gonna lose any sleep over it, as those stations are (perhaps literally) a dime a dozen.
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Channel 20 WQDI-LD TV
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Nooooo!
Et Tu Brute?
Jokes aside, I'm not really gonna lose any sleep over it, as those stations are (perhaps literally) a dime a dozen.
More than interesting, as now I see the true purpose of these stations. (Idiot me, thought they actually meant well. Sounds more like they hope insomniacs without cable might pass by and find something worth buying.) I don't have time for an impromptu poll, but often wonder how many of my friends and co-workers know of the low-powers.
Fun fact: When it was WCLQ, then WQHS...I used to watch HSN on Channel 61 for the "Live feel". (Third shift worker, it kept my nights off aligned). At that time, it was live and very few other stations were around to keep us company. Never bought one item, but liked the out-of-state weather updates and peoples reasoning for purchasing. As they always took out-of-town calls.
Yes, from pre sign on...I watched the pages to see what might morph from those stations (What was that, about 2015???)
My thought/hope is we'd see "A well meaning network of local, well informing and entertaining stations.". Please don't offer to sell me an ant farm business or anything now...
I think Cozi and Buzzr! were about all they briefly, once gave us.
(Thought) maybe this was like the minor leagues for those stations until the big stations picked them up or saw no merit in doing so.
WEKA-LD signed on around this time back in 2016. Not sure about WQDI-LD as I never was able to pull them in due to their pathetic .25 kW of power that they had at that time.
I always hoped that one of the stronger low power stations would do something like that. At the time, W16DO-D was the obvious choice, but Media-Com was too cheap to add any subchannels or upgrade their equipment to do so.My thought/hope is we'd see "A well meaning network of local, well informing and entertaining stations.". Please don't offer to sell me an ant farm business or anything now...
I think Cozi and Buzzr! were about all they briefly, once gave us.
WLFM-LD showed some promise after they converted to digital, but they never added anything outside of Jewelry TV. Plus they always had technical difficulties with their equipment. A year later, they sold the station to Gray, which of course changed the calls to WTCL-LD and turned it into a Telemundo affiliate. Their subs consist of simulcasts of WOIO 19.1, WUAB 43.1, and O&O Circle, with no plans to add something not seen in the market.
WRAP-LD... Well, we all know what became of them... 10 years of holding onto a silent license just to give us 4 subs of the same infomercials with random color bars. I thought that they had something in mind to offer something worth watching after going through all this trouble just to sign on a digital broadcast, but nooooo... They probably would had made more money selling the station to someone else.
As of this post, Weigel and their purchase of W16DO-D/W27EA-D (now WOCV-CD) is about the closest that we have to a decent low power entertainment station here in Cleveland. WIVM-LD would be better, as they have local shows and events on their main sub, along with several smaller diginets commonly found on other low power stations across the country. They are still trying to get their WIVX-LD repeater moved up to Cleveland, which is a waste of time in my opinion, as it's on RF 13 (interference-prone VHF frequency) and has limited coverage due to being shoehorned between 3 other co-channel stations. Furthermore, I can easily see WTVG in Toledo wiping them out under the slightest amount of tropo, if that doesn't happen already with their current Akron broadcast. If they want a strong presence in the Cleveland area, they should make an offer to buy WRAP-LD, especially if its owner is trying of off-load the station.
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OK, but why? Granted, the current uses for each of those stations are probably shy of notability, but there's a ton of historical information (previous owners, previous subchannel lineups, etc.) on each of those pages that will get flushed away if those articles are deleted. That seems unfortunate.
WLFM was a FrankenFM that lost the ability to transmit a meaningful analog signal at 87.75 once WOUC was moved to RF channel 6 (preventing them from trying a hybrid ATSC 3.0/analog 87.7 signal like what WRME Chicago does). Jewelry TV was a stopgap until Tom Wilson's Murray Hill group could offload the signal.
In defense of Gray, Telemundo is a unique service along with local newscasts and the repeating of WOIO/WUAB helps address the combined 19/43 signal's weaknesses. I'd rather have that than a bunch of second-tier diginets, beIN, New Tang Dynasty or Jimmy Swaggert's SonLife or all-infomercial feeds clogging up the dial.
I contacted WLFM-LD at the time and was told that they did have plans to add additional subchannels, once they were confident that enough viewers were receiving the station. I'm sure the pandemic was a major factor in selling the station, among other things.
From what I've heard from other viewers, WTCL's simulcast of WOIO & WUAB really doesn't provide that much improvement over their problematic RF 10 broadcast. Best case situation would be for nearby viewers using an indoor antenna or those that are drastically affected by multipath or interference issues with RF 10. And no, I really wouldn't want to see the networks that you mentioned be picked up by one of the decent low power stations. I was referring to networks like This TV, The Grio, Retro TV, Heartland, ACE, NewsNet, etc.
Decades was on one of those DTV America (HC2) stations early on.
That was WQDI-LD, and I believe it was on their .5 sub. Thank goodness WBNX eventually picked them up as WQDI never came in for me at the that time, or for the 98% of antenna viewers in Cuyahoga County. Yes, Decades' coverage has shrunk a bit since moving to WOCV-CD, but at least it's receivable. Still no word as to when they will obtain satellite/cable coverage, as that would make the station available to more viewers outside their coverage area. Story Television is now carried on Spectrum, but it's a direct network feed and not originating from WOCV-CD 35.2 since it lacks the top-of-the hour ID. Start TV is the same as well, and is one of the few ways to watch the network in HD. H&I and Movies both originate from WBNX and are in SD.
Back to WQDI-LD... As of late, they really haven't been coming in for me at all, but it's not like I'm really missing anything.
WOCV has now been added to Spectrum on channel 15,
Did this just happen? I can't check at the moment since I don't have cable, but one of my neighbors has Spectrum. I just checked for it this past Monday as I was watching her dog and didn't see it on the list, just WTCL-LD. I also just checked the Decades website and WOCV 35.1 (over the air) is the only one listed.
Had to have been just in the last few days, as I just happened to stumble onto it myself today flipping through the channels.
Spectrum just had a hefty cable rate increase, so I guess this is what customers are paying for. I am sure Spectrum is getting a nice fee to carry these stations, either cash or commercial trade time or both.
LPTV was originally authorized to give smaller towns and communities a local TV outlet to serve their residents. Just like translators and LPFM, the FCC sat by and watched the perversion and destruction of that purpose by the big money. To my knowledge, the Telecommunications act of 1934 has not been repealed, but the doctrine of the airwaves being owned by the public to be used in their interest, convenience and necessity has vanished from its pages and few seem to care.
LPTV was originally authorized to give smaller towns and communities a local TV outlet to serve their residents. Just like translators and LPFM, the FCC sat by and watched the perversion and destruction of that purpose by the big money. To my knowledge, the Telecommunications act of 1934 has not been repealed, but the doctrine of the airwaves being owned by the public to be used in their interest, convenience and necessity has vanished from its pages and few seem to care.
I think somewhere in this thread, I mentioned what happened when the first licenses were applied for LPTV (At least in the Cleveland area)...It's well meaning purpose - Never happened.
The problem (and/or obvious fact) with free enterprise is, someone (usually the consumer) has to pay for it. Time the number of commercials during a football game from 1980, then a modern one. It's beyond, "not worth it", to watch an entire broadcast. Just like a bunch of shop-at-homes on a broken up LPTV signal, or cable systems overcharging to give us "Everything". Is no better than if Aliens took over and occupied "Channel 1".
It can be spewed out...But I'd choose a book or DVD over most of it anytime.
"LPTV was originally authorized to give smaller towns and communities a local TV outlet to serve their residents. Just like translators and LPFM, the FCC sat by and watched the perversion and destruction of that purpose by the big money."
You can say that again. Just about every low power TV station is either running endless home shopping programming, the MMN Movie Network (which plays beat up prints of public domain movies...the same ones over and over again), religious stuff, soccer from Brazil or fringe political stuff like New Tang Dynasty Television. Only Channel 35 with "Decades" and "Story Television" seem worthwhile to me. As far as radio goes, aside from WOVU (95.9) which is a true community station, all the other low power drop-in frequencies were snatched up by WTAM, WHK, WHKW, WERE, WINT, WKDD, WAKS and WAKR. Either that or EMF with their religious K-Love and AIR-1 satellite feeds. Community service, my ass.
The decision-making process @Sammi Brie and I went through in evaluating all those articles was pretty extensive, and the list contains all the subchannel info that can be found. (DTV is rather bad at keeping their subchannel lists up to date and RabbitEars has no updates provided on the former Azteca America affiliates. Let alone Vision Latina, one of the replacement diginets DTV has inserted in place of many AA clearances, having NO coverage in the trades whatsoever.)
The big problem with LPTV is there’s next to no media coverage on the vast majority of them. It’s made worse with the near-elimination of coverage on broadcast media from traditional outlets, plus most of these stations have next to no cable carriage. To be honest, if it wasn’t for its predecessor WOAH-LP 29 being co-owned with WNIR, Bob Dyer would never have spilled any ink on what is now WOCV back in the early 1990s.
The FCC has made multiple strategic miscalculations in the later half of the 20th century. NBCO, Docket 80-90, LPFMs, the UHF Discount, “AM Revitalization” (aka handing an FM translator to an AM station and literally nothing else) and LPTVs are among the biggest. On paper, they could have been good things, but the execution of them was a different story.
Has Telemundo Cleveland been added to Spectrum?
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