Morgan Wick said:
Maybe not a complete merger, but could there be some consolidation of stations between Cincinnati and Dayton, and maybe Columbus? Those three markets and Indianapolis are so close that Cincinnati and Columbus are the largest markets where either the CW or MyNet has to settle for a subchannel, and it might be by a substantial margin depending on how you look at it, and there's next to no openings for a new station.
No
Seriously, the widespread adoption of cable & satellite have IMHO frozen market boundaries. Especially among markets which already have affiliates of all four major networks. Even if the Columbus affiliates agreed to allow cable/satellite operators there to import Dayton or Cincinnati signals, chances are viewers would still overwhelmingly watch the Columbus stations. (more relevant news, weather, sports -- and commercials)
To get these markets merged, two sets of network affiliates would have to go away. (or at least, drop their major-network affiliations) Sinclair does control or operate most of the Fox affiliates and two ABC affiliates in the area, but no one owner is responsible for more than one of the rest of the stations. At least four owners would see the values of their stations pretty much vanish. Not going to happen.
Besides... with the channel repacking that's already happened... and that which is planned for the near future... the chances that the FCC would allow significant tower site changes in this crowded part of the country are pretty close to zero.
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poledo said:
Has there ever been an attempt to reclassify TV stations in the way AM and FM stations are? Say have a certain amount of TV stations that have "flamethrower" licenses spread around so they could cover multiple DMAs, entire states in some cases. Then have a whole lot of regional and local frequencies... making Class A TV stations legitimate local stations and leaving LP and TV translators for the home shopping and religious networks or to fill in white areas.
I know some may say that was essentially the way things were in the VHF/UHF analog days but why not try it out now? Or would it just be impossible with today's DTV technology?
There were two classes of TV (and FM) stations when the World War II freeze was lifted. There weren't many takers for the "metropolitan" stations and they disappeared with Channel 1. I think the FCC saw they'd gotten into a mess with AM and were reluctant to repeat it. For the life of analog TV, you couldn't launch a new station unless you could find a channel that could be used at full power/tower height without interfering, even if the power you actually planned to use was far lower. Stations in the early 1950s, trying to get off UHF, tried to get the Commission to loosen up & allow shorter-spaced VHF stations if lower power was used -- but the Commission never bit.
In most cases, it would not have been possible to establish a technical facility that would cover more than one DMA. A four-fold increase in power for a maximum-power VHF-Low station might yield only a 15% increase in coverage radius -- in most cases not enough to encompass the central city of the adjacent DMA. You could move the transmitter to a point midway between the two cities, but at the expense of making the signal MUCH weaker in both cities. (exactly where people are stuck with small antennas and noise and need as much signal as possible. Meantime, your signal is strongest in the rural areas between the two cities, where everyone has a nice tall outside antenna on quiet farmland)
Today, the limited value of power increases still exists, and so does the problem of not having enough signal in the central cities from an outside transmitter site.
What you *could* do is a single-frequency-network, with multiple transmitters on the same channel serving a wide area. That would work pretty well from a technical standpoint. However, you get into legal/contractural issues when you start expanding a signal outside its existing DMA. You could expand WBNS-TV's signal to cover all of Ohio using dozens of transmitters on channel 21. But then, what do you do for the existing CBS affiliates in Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown, Dayton, Cincinnati, Lima, Marietta, and Steubenville? Eight plaintiffs, two defendants, I think I see where that would go
