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Comcast's carriage of WMUR in Massachusetts

K

kramie13

Banned
Hello,

I've noticed that some cities/towns in Eastern Massachusetts served by Comcast (within the Boston DMA) receive two ABC affiliates (WCVB-5, Boston and WMUR-9, Manchester NH), while others receive just one (WCVB). For the most part, areas north of Boston receive both stations, but it's *very* inconsistent. For example:

-Framingham and Sudbury get WMUR but Natick, Marlborough, and Wayland do not. Marlborough and Wayland are closer to NH than Framingham!
-Lexington gets WMUR but Burlington and Wilmington do not. Burlington and Wilmington are closer to NH than Lexington!
-Marblehead (inside Rte. 128) gets WMUR (!!) but Salem, Peabody, and Newburyport do not. Newburyport is much closer to NH than Marblehead!

Even more odd, out of all the cities/towns I just mentioned that get WMUR on Comcast, only Marblehead gets it in both SD and HD on Channels 9 and 809. Framingham, Sudbury, and Lexington ONLY get WMUR in HD on Ch. 809. Cable channel 9 is a local PEG channel in those cities/towns, so those who have SD boxes or don't pay the "HD Technology Fee" only get WCVB for ABC, but they still get WMUR 9.2 (Me TV) on Channel 945.

Anyone know why some towns are lucky to receive two ABC stations, and why (in some cases), WMUR is carried in HD but not SD? Usually when cable companies carry two stations of the same affiliate, only 1 is carried in HD and the other is SD only. While it may prove useful at times to have 2 ABC stations when 1 of them breaks into programming for breaking news, it can also be a waste of bandwidth that could be used for other HD cable channels or extra internet download speeds!
 
CTListener said:
To New Hampshire, yes, but to Manchester, specifically? Consider how much farther east Newburyport is.
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Newburyport is the closest to Manchester of the cities and towns listed. Having grown up in an adjacent town, I can also tell you that back in the analog days, channels 9 and 11 from NH put the strongest signals into the northeastern corner of MA (Nbpt, Salisbury, Amesbury). I'm surprised that it's not available in Newburyport.

However, I'm not so surprised at the inconsistency between cities and towns further away from Manchester or the NH border, and closer to Boston.
 
Manchester stations show up on Boston area cable because the market is Boston/Manchester, correct?
The Sudbury example is interesting. The towns directly east and west of it are different but the town south also gets the Manchester station. Is it something technical?f
 
Yes, the market is Boston/Manchester. Verizon Fios and DirecTV carry both WCVB and WMUR throughout the entire Boston DMA.

But with Comcast, it's hit or miss whether you're "fortunate" to get 1 or 2 ABC stations, both in HD. I say "fortunate" in the sense that say, WCVB breaks into ABC network programming to cover a breaking news event but WMUR doesn't. A Sudbury or Framingham subscriber can switch to WMUR and continue watching the program. But not if you have an SD box, and not if you live in Marlborough or Wayland. Why would someone in Sudbury/Framingham get "rewarded" but someone in Marlborough/Wayland "punished"? And I doubt people in Framingham/Sudbury watch WMUR. The bandwidth used to carry that signal could be re-allocated for faster internet speeds or a few HD cable channels.
 
kramie13 said:
Yes, the market is Boston/Manchester. Verizon Fios and DirecTV carry both WCVB and WMUR throughout the entire Boston DMA.

But with Comcast, it's hit or miss whether you're "fortunate" to get 1 or 2 ABC stations, both in HD. I say "fortunate" in the sense that say, WCVB breaks into ABC network programming to cover a breaking news event but WMUR doesn't. A Sudbury or Framingham subscriber can switch to WMUR and continue watching the program. But not if you have an SD box, and not if you live in Marlborough or Wayland. Why would someone in Sudbury/Framingham get "rewarded" but someone in Marlborough/Wayland "punished"? And I doubt people in Framingham/Sudbury watch WMUR. The bandwidth used to carry that signal could be re-allocated for faster internet speeds or a few HD cable channels.
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It's been previously discussed elsewhere that Hearst would prefer to not have WMUR on systems in MA, except those near the NH border, because it reduces the number of viewers of advertising sold only on WCVB and targeted to the Boston area. Comcast in the area is made up of many previously separate cable operators, and apparently there are separate retransmission and must-carry rules for different parts, but not for DirecTv, Dish, FIOS and RCN. I don't know if this is fully accurate though.
 
As stated, Comcast is very old school. The same thing is true for WJAR in southern and southeastern Massachusetts (excluding Bristol county). Charter carries WJAR on most systems in Worcester county, although only in SD. And it's available on several Comcast systems, but I think it is a bit inconsistent. I remember when communities got all 3 of the Providence networks (WLNE, WJAR, WPRI), which was even more inconsistent. Ashland and Holliston got all of them, while Hopkinton didn't get any. Most of western Norfolk County got them, I think. But as of right now, no cable system in this part of the state carries WLNE, and the only towns that receive WPRI north of RI are Douglas, Millville, Sutton and Uxbridge.
 
ssetta said:
As stated, Comcast is very old school. The same thing is true for WJAR in southern and southeastern Massachusetts (excluding Bristol county). Charter carries WJAR on most systems in Worcester county, although only in SD. And it's available on several Comcast systems, but I think it is a bit inconsistent. I remember when communities got all 3 of the Providence networks (WLNE, WJAR, WPRI), which was even more inconsistent. Ashland and Holliston got all of them, while Hopkinton didn't get any. Most of western Norfolk County got them, I think. But as of right now, no cable system in this part of the state carries WLNE, and the only towns that receive WPRI north of RI are Douglas, Millville, Sutton and Uxbridge.
Click to expand...

Some of this may be be due to the still used significantly-viewed data rules based on viewers of analog coverage many years ago. In particular WLNE on ch. 6 had signal issues in MA mostly due to lower adjacent channel interference from ch. 5's audio signal, creating beats in the video, which got worse the closer one was to Needham.
 
The opposite is also true. WCVB is carried on cable systems way up north of Concord in NH. When I lived there, we always watched WMUR for their excellent coverage of local NH news. It is nice to get both, at times for local programming only on WCVB.
 
VoiceofWayne said:
The opposite is also true. WCVB is carried on cable systems way up north of Concord in NH. When I lived there, we always watched WMUR for their excellent coverage of local NH news. It is nice to get both, at times for local programming only on WCVB.
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Hanover/Lebanon, NH, has Boston channels 4, 5 and 7 on its Comcast system.
 
VoiceofWayne said:
The opposite is also true. WCVB is carried on cable systems way up north of Concord in NH. When I lived there, we always watched WMUR for their excellent coverage of local NH news. It is nice to get both, at times for local programming only on WCVB.
Click to expand...

NH viewers without cable needed large antennas to receive all of the networks, and received WCVB (and predecessor - the original WHDH) as well as any other Boston station - so the percentage of NH viewers of WCVB was undoubtedly always much higher than the percentage of MA viewers of WMUR.

Of course if you go back far enough to the 1950's, WMUR was the only ABC affiliate in the Boston market before WHDH signed on in the late 1950's.
 
Good point -- Mass viewers would not "need" to view NH stations the reverse is much more likely. I always hoped that another network affiliate would be available in Manchester, much like the ill-fated WNHT experiment with CBS . Would be nice to have some more local competition for WMUR.
 
Cable-TV channel offerings have certainly changed quite a bit over the years, let alone the decades. Back in the "Dark Ages", when the world was young, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the channel offerings (before being taken over by Cox) not only included all the New Bedford / Providence stations, but also all Boston stations, with the exception of the then WABU-68, not to mention WTBS and WPIX.

Cable-TV has slowly morphed into something unrecognizable to me, (not to mention the pricing structure of the various "packages", and has become a hideous monster. No wonder people (including little old me) have "cut-the-cord".
 
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