K
kenrayc
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KML-224 said:
Interesting how the UHF FOX station in on
VHF and the VHF locals are at the high end of the line up.
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Crappy Hotel "Cable" Report - Bedford Park, IL
- Thread starter KML0224
- Start date
Interesting how the UHF FOX station in on
VHF and the VHF locals are at the high end of the line up.
KML-224 said:
That is HORRENDOUS! I'll name off some of the more popular locals you missed out on:
WCIU (Independent) channel 26 Chicago
WPWR (My) channel 50 Gary/Chicago
WYCC (PBS) channel 20 Chicago
WSNS (Telemundo) channel 44 Chicago
WGBO (Univision) channel 66 Joliet/Chicago
WXFT (Telefutura) channel 60 Chicago
WYIN (PBS) channel 56 Gary
Not that I'd expect them to have the 3rd PBS or Telefutura, but skipping WCIU and WPWR is really bad. None of the hotels carry MeTV or MeToo because they're on digital subchannels and LPTV signals.
BRNout said:
As would be not carrying any of the Hispanic channels. Chicago has a sizable-enough Hispanic community to support three full-powered stations -- why doesn't LodgeNet even carry one.
I bet LodgeNet has very few takers in places close to the Mexican border, as well as other Hispanic-rich areas such as Los Angeles, NYC and Miami.
How do you know ahead of time as to what a hotel is going to carry? Call them up and ask? I was in the same Midway hotel complex as I was in February of 2009 (a complex of 6 or 7 hotels along South Cicero Avenue on the Bedford Park side of the Chicago city line). It was also irritating to see an old school 27" Philips tube TV, with no way to adjust the picture with the remote (no MENU button on the front of the TV). As a result, I watched maybe a half hour of TV the whole 2 days.
I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in King of Prussia, PA back in 2007. Although there were a limited number of Channels, at least they carried Food Network. However NBC 10 WCAU was on Channel 10 and the reception was watchable, but very very bad. I think they used DISH Network as the provider because I seem to remember commercials for Dish Network Pay-Per-View.
The best hotel cable line-up I have seen? The Super 8 Motel on Putney Road (Route 5) in Brattleboro, Vermont. The last time my family and I stayed there in August 2001, they carried nearly every channel from the local Adelphia Cable System. I wonder if they still do now that this Adelphia system was sold to Comcast.
The best hotel cable line-up I have seen? The Super 8 Motel on Putney Road (Route 5) in Brattleboro, Vermont. The last time my family and I stayed there in August 2001, they carried nearly every channel from the local Adelphia Cable System. I wonder if they still do now that this Adelphia system was sold to Comcast.
MarcB said:
There's many that carry all the popular channels, like this Wingate Inn in Duluth, GA off I-85, carries basically the whole Comcast system, the last I checked two years ago.
Generally, the more expensive the hotel, the less likely it is to carry the regular cable lineup. Our Marriott downtown only carries about 20 channels, and all are on different numbers from the cable.
Generally, the more expensive the hotel, the less likely it is to carry the regular cable lineup. Our Marriott downtown only carries about 20 channels, and all are on different numbers from the cable.
I've been in several hotels (don't ask):
Extended Stay, Des Plaines IL: For some inexplicable reason WFLD/Fox was replaced with..."Congratulations! You have a DISH 500". I took a picture of it. OTA channels were snowy/interference (this was 2008).
Millennium/Millennial (can't remember the right name): (2006) Lots of international channels among other things. They ran their own system.
Middletown, NY: Big 4 stations clustered between 2-5 - WABC was 2, WCBS was 3, WNYW was 4, and WNBC was 5. (3 out of 4 confusing sticky situations.) Probably going alphabetical again. (2006)
InnSuites, Tucson AZ: OK lineup...but the hotel sucked. Crime scene tape in one of the doors and bad customer service.
Wyndham, Glenview IL: Dish Network-provided, but still kinda "meh". NOT LodgeNet though due to Dish.
Didn't help that one of the Chicago hotels was wired to the hotel system, so no Comcast SportsNet.
Extended Stay, Des Plaines IL: For some inexplicable reason WFLD/Fox was replaced with..."Congratulations! You have a DISH 500". I took a picture of it. OTA channels were snowy/interference (this was 2008).
Millennium/Millennial (can't remember the right name): (2006) Lots of international channels among other things. They ran their own system.
Middletown, NY: Big 4 stations clustered between 2-5 - WABC was 2, WCBS was 3, WNYW was 4, and WNBC was 5. (3 out of 4 confusing sticky situations.) Probably going alphabetical again. (2006)
InnSuites, Tucson AZ: OK lineup...but the hotel sucked. Crime scene tape in one of the doors and bad customer service.
Wyndham, Glenview IL: Dish Network-provided, but still kinda "meh". NOT LodgeNet though due to Dish.
Didn't help that one of the Chicago hotels was wired to the hotel system, so no Comcast SportsNet.
It doesn't make sense for these "loding-only" systems to offer what they do - even if their facilities only allow for a couple dozen channels. Onlyl excuse seems to be the "deals" they struck, but that doesn't explain why major local channels, especially a PBS outlet, is excluded.
What I've seen offered on major city and rural interstate hotel/motel in-room TVs rarely seems to reflect the needs or interests of a lot of travelers.
I would think that inns where Canadian travelers regularly visit should carry at least the CBC. All the way to Florida. And as far as spot news and weather/road conditions, good luck finding much of that.
When I'm on a road trip (particularly if it involves driving the soul-quenching interstate highways), I could use a laugh at night. But I've never seen the Comedy Central on a hotel TV line up? What, afraid we'll watch The Daily Show and that will upset the power balance in the next election?
This discussion yet again shows the need for real programming people to be in charge of program offerings on cable systems and hotel TVs, instead of letting the sales department alone determine the content that is offered to the public.
What I've seen offered on major city and rural interstate hotel/motel in-room TVs rarely seems to reflect the needs or interests of a lot of travelers.
I would think that inns where Canadian travelers regularly visit should carry at least the CBC. All the way to Florida. And as far as spot news and weather/road conditions, good luck finding much of that.
When I'm on a road trip (particularly if it involves driving the soul-quenching interstate highways), I could use a laugh at night. But I've never seen the Comedy Central on a hotel TV line up? What, afraid we'll watch The Daily Show and that will upset the power balance in the next election?
This discussion yet again shows the need for real programming people to be in charge of program offerings on cable systems and hotel TVs, instead of letting the sales department alone determine the content that is offered to the public.
Goldilocks94941 said:
Hotels signing up with LodgeNet, its affiliates, or competitors hope to make money off their pay-per-view offerings as opposed to providing as many channels to the guest as possible. They think that since the guests will be doing other things for the most part, a basic offering of the most popular local channels and the most popular cable networkswould suffice - it seems like most hotels carry at least ESPN (and ESPN2), The Weather Channel, CNBC, and both CNN and Fox News (I guess in order to not offend anyone with strong political viewpoints one way or the other).
I think the most bizarre lineup of any hotel I've stayed during the past five years had to be the Catamaran in San Diego. This is a resort that has (or had) a reserved parking space for a member of the McKinnon family that owns local independent station KUSI, but they didn't carry the station on their TV system! They had the Mexican-licensed "rimshot" MyNetworkTV station available though.
Kinda hard for me to believe that carrying both CNN and Fox qualifies as addressing "both sides" of the political spectrum. That kind of thinking (if that's what's behind the fact that those are the only so-called "news" networks offered by Comcast) is like saying your radio station plays "both kinds of music. Take it or leave it!"
The frustrating part for me, and I think a lot of other people who aren't there in the audience much anymore, is that straight-forward spot news coverage, the kind that used to carry more than 20 news stories an hour, with pictures!, is missing from cable TV. We have a regional news network in Seattle (NWCN), but they repeat themselves a lot, and don't actually deliver most of the stories that they ambiguously tease in their crawl.
Whoever we are, where ever it is we are traveling, we actually need to know what's going on in the world -- not a politicization of everything into the lame-brained opinions of some beauty queen on TV!!
Are there any just-plain-news networks that any of you can find on your cable or satellite TVs? When in Europe, I appreciated CNN International, and BBC Newsworld (tho' BBC has gotten repetitive on just a handful of stories now) - but that's about all I've had a chance to see. Would sure appreciate those on my local cable system, plus some other news channels in English, including Canadian news networks and Al-Jazeera's international service. What's the point of having hundreds of channels if they're all playing essentially the same repeats, "reality" competitions, and infomercials??
The frustrating part for me, and I think a lot of other people who aren't there in the audience much anymore, is that straight-forward spot news coverage, the kind that used to carry more than 20 news stories an hour, with pictures!, is missing from cable TV. We have a regional news network in Seattle (NWCN), but they repeat themselves a lot, and don't actually deliver most of the stories that they ambiguously tease in their crawl.
Whoever we are, where ever it is we are traveling, we actually need to know what's going on in the world -- not a politicization of everything into the lame-brained opinions of some beauty queen on TV!!
Are there any just-plain-news networks that any of you can find on your cable or satellite TVs? When in Europe, I appreciated CNN International, and BBC Newsworld (tho' BBC has gotten repetitive on just a handful of stories now) - but that's about all I've had a chance to see. Would sure appreciate those on my local cable system, plus some other news channels in English, including Canadian news networks and Al-Jazeera's international service. What's the point of having hundreds of channels if they're all playing essentially the same repeats, "reality" competitions, and infomercials??
azumanga said:
From doing a Google search, it appears that Clinton McKinnon, the father of KUSI's owners, was one of the founders of the Catamaran. His wife (widow), Lucille (not sure if she's still alive or not), still had a reserved parking space at the resort as of last year.
The McKinnons no longer own any interest in the Catamaran.
KML-224 said:
Given that this was the analog era, I'd guess the interference on 13 was probably WOCK-CA or (if the conditions were right) CCI from even WREX-Rockford!
Eric Stein said:
I'm astounded to see how advanced San Diego County hospitals are, but their patient television offerings/channel lineups are horrible. Not only that, oftentimes the reception of even popular cable TV networks on their inhouse networks are despicably bad. I recall how Scripps Mercy hospital in downtown San Diego doesn't even carry all of the local network affiliates, has channels with the CG "reserved for future use," etc.
mleach said:
I could see why WCCO was blacked out during the day--Rochester is part of the same DMA as Mason City and Austin (so I can see the Twin Cities stations being blacked out). But still it doesn't explain why the CBS affiliate for Rochester's home market was blacked out with no other alternative available.
I travel a lot.
These days, my travel kit includes a DTV tuner and antenna, so I'm much less concerned than I used to be about what's on the hotel's own TV lineup. But back in the day, if it was important to me to have access to a particular station's programming, I had no problem calling before I made my reservations to ask about the channel lineup. Even if the desk clerk didn't know whether the hotel was on the local cable system or LodgeNet or was rolling its own, it was a fairly simple process to ask them to read off the first dozen or so channels on the lineup card and to compare them to the local cable lineup (easy to obtain from Zap2it or wherever).
If it's that important to you to have the "right" channel lineup, complaining about it here won't do you much good. We are not "normal" travelers here, after all. Most travelers - and by "most" I mean something like 99.9% of an average hotel's clientele - don't give a rat's hindquarters about whether or not the second PBS station or the Ion affiliate or even the local NBC station is on the cable. They might flip on the TV and scan around to see if there's anything worth watching, or (the hotel hopes!) order a PPV movie and bill it to the corporate travel account. They're more interested in whether or not there are cockroaches in the bathroom or dirty sheets on the bed than on what's on the TV.
Hotel operators know this, which is why they don't care too much about their TV lineups, and which is why a service like LodgeNet is so appealing, since it can turn the TV in the room from an expense into a profit item.
And if that bothers you, then you need to let the hotel owners know about it. If - and it's a huge "if" - enough people cared enough to complain, then something might change. That doesn't seem likely to me.
These days, my travel kit includes a DTV tuner and antenna, so I'm much less concerned than I used to be about what's on the hotel's own TV lineup. But back in the day, if it was important to me to have access to a particular station's programming, I had no problem calling before I made my reservations to ask about the channel lineup. Even if the desk clerk didn't know whether the hotel was on the local cable system or LodgeNet or was rolling its own, it was a fairly simple process to ask them to read off the first dozen or so channels on the lineup card and to compare them to the local cable lineup (easy to obtain from Zap2it or wherever).
If it's that important to you to have the "right" channel lineup, complaining about it here won't do you much good. We are not "normal" travelers here, after all. Most travelers - and by "most" I mean something like 99.9% of an average hotel's clientele - don't give a rat's hindquarters about whether or not the second PBS station or the Ion affiliate or even the local NBC station is on the cable. They might flip on the TV and scan around to see if there's anything worth watching, or (the hotel hopes!) order a PPV movie and bill it to the corporate travel account. They're more interested in whether or not there are cockroaches in the bathroom or dirty sheets on the bed than on what's on the TV.
Hotel operators know this, which is why they don't care too much about their TV lineups, and which is why a service like LodgeNet is so appealing, since it can turn the TV in the room from an expense into a profit item.
And if that bothers you, then you need to let the hotel owners know about it. If - and it's a huge "if" - enough people cared enough to complain, then something might change. That doesn't seem likely to me.
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