Delta radio and TV: WBZL seems to be on, a local NBC is coming, and more…

[tomservo]

Just got back from a two week trip out west and lo there are several newsworthy items from the Delta.

First and foremost, it seems Telesouth's WBZL, licensed to Greenwood, is on the air this evening with the all star baseball game feed from ESPN. No local commercials or IDs yet that I've heard, but I just missed the top of hour break.

I suppose this 103.3 MHz station is why our translator in Grenada on 103.1 MHz finally got shut down, after airing dead air or whatever it happened to pick up for months. Surprisingly, the Grenada "pirate" operating on WOHT's second-adjacent is still on, with dead air. WMUT 101.3 MHz is of course still off. I guess it's gone for good.

In television news, I saw on WABG's 5 o'clock news that Commonwealth Broadcasting is launching the first NBC affiliate for the Greenwood-Greenville-Lake Village, AR market. WNBD-LD on RF channel 33 is scheduled to begin airing NBC HD programming sometime this fall. Sadly, it's just a LPTV and will only cover the Greenwood-Greenville-Indianola-Cleveland areas and leave us Grenadians & Clarksdalians out in the cold. I suppose this will be the end of WTVA/WMC/WLBT on local cable headends?

Dish Network announced that they'd begin carrying the Delta TV market later this year, but with KARK from Little Rock as the NBC affiliate. We'll see if that pans out.

 

[mikl73]

Coahoma county is actually in the Memphis DMA for TV.

Ch 40 is the only memphis channel not on cable there

 

[tomservo]

Coahoma county is actually in the Memphis DMA for TV.

Ch 40 is the only memphis channel not on cable there

Ohhh, that's right, I forgot about that. But aren't Quitman and Panola Counties in the Greenwood-Greenville DMA now or something? I recall hearing about how CableONE was being forced to drop WPTY for WABG or some such nonsense in those areas.

 

[mikl73]

Panola & Quitman are both in the Memphis market also.

6 & 15 really have no presence in Panola other than being on cable there. I doubt anyone really watches them for news. I don't recall in my time in the delta ever seeing either station cover anything in Panola County. The have on rare occasions covered stuff in Marks but it's not an area they really care about. No business in Marks advertises on TV. The don't even advertise on radio.

 

[tomservo]

Panola & Quitman are both in the Memphis market also.

6 & 15 really have no presence in Panola other than being on cable there. I doubt anyone really watches them for news. I don't recall in my time in the delta ever seeing either station cover anything in Panola County. The have on rare occasions covered stuff in Marks but it's not an area they really care about. No business in Marks advertises on TV. The don't even advertise on radio.

It's funny you say that because during the newscast where they announced the NBC station, there was a TV ad for a BBQ joint in Marks.

But that WAS the first time I'd ever seen a commercial for something from Quitman County.

I guess what I saw earlier regarding WABG in Quitman and Panola Counties was some FCC paper regarding adding those counties to WABG's market for mandatory carriage purposes. Ah, here it is. (PDF warning) Looks like they petitioned to move some of Panola, Quitman and Coahoma Counties under their market area. The way it was explained to me was that ABC is no longer letting cable companies carry affiliates based on retrans agreements, but only on must carry status, and WABG was doing this to assert that it was the primary ABC affiliate in these areas despite them being in the Memphis DMA. This means that these areas' cable companies would lose WPTY out of Memphis for WABG exclusively if the programming was substantially duplicated.

I'm not sure I have the full grasp of the situation because I thought that, inside a DMA, local stations ruled no matter what. The FCC ruling on this seems to give WABG primary ABC status in those three counties. ???

 

[jboyd]

Sorry, Michael...We have several Quitman County/Marks accounts...but I would say we have 95%...nothing spectacular but the pulse is still there...for now, anyway. Come see us when in the area. Regards...

 

[the golden boy]

I'm not sure I have the full grasp of the situation because I thought that, inside a DMA, local stations ruled no matter what. The FCC ruling on this seems to give WABG primary ABC status in those three counties. ???

If that's the case, the cable company that serves Forrest City, AR, will have two drop two of the ABCs they carry: Memphis, Jonesboro and Little Rock.

 

[mikl73]

Zach 6 & 15 do serve Coahoma County far better than the Memphis signals. 6 & 15 analog were easily received on Rabbit Ears in Clarksdale. They have covers some news on and off over the years. There isn't really much going on in Clarksdale other than maybe what new Pawn Shop has opened or what red light has been converted to a stop sign.

By the way 15 could be picked up very well with just the UHF loop on the back of the TV. I'm sure after the conversion that has all changed.

Getting the Memphis signals in town is another story. I can only speak for analog though. You had to have a good sized antenna 40ft or higher to get the VHF's well. A very high gain UHF yagi is needed for 24 & 30 and they drop in strength during the day everyday to a fairly weak signal with a pretty snowy picture.

Cablecom (now cable one) ended up putting a tower up well to the north and using microwave to get decent signals from Memphis. 3 was always the worst. You could often see WLBT causing havoc.

 

[tomservo]

Cablecom (now cable one) ended up putting a tower up well to the north and using microwave to get decent signals from Memphis. 3 was always the worst. You could often see WLBT causing havoc.

Supposedly they used microwave to bring 3 or 5 to Grenada, I forget which. We got a small article in the local paper saying that they were dropping the Memphis stations when the digital switchover occurred because they couldn't get the digital station over the microwave link, which is puzzling. First, I don't see how it could be so difficult to microwave a downconverted digital signal through the same path and second, when they turned off whatever was on cable channel 3, we started seeing the analog night light service from KTBS in Shreveport. And now it's WLBT, lol, so who knows what the real motivation was.

Taking a quick look at the "service contour" maps for the Memphis and Delta stations, it does seem that only WXVT and WABG put a usable signal over Clarklsdale. WMC comes close but being on RF channel 5 I doubt that anyone in Memphis can even get them reliably.

The whole DMA thing is so stupid to me, anyway. If people in Clarksdale wanted to watch Memphis channels more, they should be allowed to whether they have an antenna, cable or satellite. Obviously they can with the proper antenna (and a prayer) but satellite folks especially are hamstrung. Grenada County where I live is especially screwy. We're a part of the Greenwood-Greenville market but OTA is very hit and miss except for WABG. Instead most people seem to have better luck with WTVA, WLOV, WKDH and sometimes WCBI out of the Tupelo-Columbus-West Point market. Me, I can't seem to get either WXVT or WCBI so no CBS for me. And until recently, the only PBS I could get was out of Oxford — in the Memphis market.

I tried to get waivers a while back and even though I'm not in the Columbus market, I still got denied for all the networks even though technically there's no NBC for the Delta yet. And even though there's no Fox HD that I can get, I was denied for that, too. Being outside WXVT's service contour didn't help me for CBS, either. It's madness.

Imagine what life would be like if your radio only let you tune to "local market" stations. I'd have TWO choices, lol.

 

[mikl73]

I wonder if WABG will squeeze in another sub-channel and put the NBC signal on it also.

It works for WCBI so why not.

 

[mikl73]

I wonder what plans Commonwealth has for W17DI-D - Cleveland.

Original CP GRANT 02/25/2010
on the TV 6 tower 15 kW with the same pattern as WNBD-LD

 

[tomservo]

I wonder what plans Commonwealth has for W17DI-D - Cleveland.

Original CP GRANT 02/25/2010
on the TV 6 tower 15 kW with the same pattern as WNBD-LD

Dunno, but I'd love to see them put Fox on its own channel so we could see Fox programming in HD.

 

[mikl73]

yes that and also run them both in SD on a sub channel on 6 for people outside of the small footprint of those 2 signals.

 

[tomservo]

To be honest, I'd rather them spend the money not building these two LP stations out and invest in back end equipment manufactured after the dawn of color television. I've been all over the country and seen all kinds of operations, and WABG's picture quality (on both channels) is by far the worst in the country, tied with WXVT. Both stations look like weak analog cable feeds via OTA. Fuzzy pictures on 15, ghosting on 6, it's like analog never really went away!

But then, at least WABG passes ABC HD through. WXVT is too cheap to even do that.

The Delta really deserves better. I don't expect them to dish out for nice HD cameras and go HD News like WTVA in Tupelo did, but when tapes I made off cable from 25 years ago look better than your picture, you got's a problem.

 

[flytrap]

We have several station in Jackson that refuse to broadcast in HD. Even though they have plenty of bandwith available, WUFX (My35) is just sending out 480i SD (just like a subchannel) . WUFX CW 34 is sending out a 16x9 HD signal, but all the programming including HD from the CW network is in SD. You wind up with a pillarboxed or windowboxed picture. During shows that were filmed in 4:3 on CW, It looks like a tiny youtube video in the center of the screen. The transmitter is in HD, but the STL is sending them SD programming. I refuse to watch for this very reason. The picture quality during CW shows is so small that it looks worse than most subchannels. MPB has a duplicate channel that is simulcasting their main programming in SD, also windowboxed. Which is a complete waste of bandwith. Why would anyone watch the SD channel when they can get the same exact thing in HD on the other channel? They should put PBS World or something else instead of wasting space, or either turn it off.