Now that the dust has mostly settled from the KTXA change from RF-18 to RF-29, the Dallas-Ft. Worth DTV market has reached a mostly steady state. Aside from a few low powers yet to fire up, most of the action is over for a while.
So, in what's now a largely-finished D/FW DTV landscape, here are a few observations:
1). KPFW on RF-18 has yet to fire up. As a result, the Urban Superstation subchannel set to debut in mid-January 2011 is still without a home.
2). Mike and Hazel Simons have been absent for the past few weeks on the little-watched KTAQ/47. They were about 80-90% of the programming until recently.
3). KVFW/38 may be the worst-run television station I've ever seen (and I used to live on WOAY-TV's coverage area, an outlet generally conceded to be among the worst at one time). Since KVFW is a a low power, they probably get a pass but subchannels 2-4 have been colorbars for a long time. More egregious is what's on the main stream, 38-1. At any given time, you're likely to see, for hours on end, a still frozen frame from a program. If not that, you're often treated to a Windows desktop from a crashed application that delivers the programming. And I've seen several instances of a dialog box with the text: "This program's evaluation time has expired, please contact....".
4). In contrast, KHFD/51 seems to be pretty well run. I've never seen failed content on any of their 4 subchannels. And they're one of the few (only?) low power stations that actually runs weather crawls when severe weather is in the area. Unlike KVFW, it appears that someone is actually paying attention at KHFD.
So, in what's now a largely-finished D/FW DTV landscape, here are a few observations:
1). KPFW on RF-18 has yet to fire up. As a result, the Urban Superstation subchannel set to debut in mid-January 2011 is still without a home.
2). Mike and Hazel Simons have been absent for the past few weeks on the little-watched KTAQ/47. They were about 80-90% of the programming until recently.
3). KVFW/38 may be the worst-run television station I've ever seen (and I used to live on WOAY-TV's coverage area, an outlet generally conceded to be among the worst at one time). Since KVFW is a a low power, they probably get a pass but subchannels 2-4 have been colorbars for a long time. More egregious is what's on the main stream, 38-1. At any given time, you're likely to see, for hours on end, a still frozen frame from a program. If not that, you're often treated to a Windows desktop from a crashed application that delivers the programming. And I've seen several instances of a dialog box with the text: "This program's evaluation time has expired, please contact....".
4). In contrast, KHFD/51 seems to be pretty well run. I've never seen failed content on any of their 4 subchannels. And they're one of the few (only?) low power stations that actually runs weather crawls when severe weather is in the area. Unlike KVFW, it appears that someone is actually paying attention at KHFD.
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