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ThePowerCow

Is there any other market than Montgomery where the towers for the major network affiliates are 30 to 40 miles away from the city in three directions.
Fine when the winds are calm, but one the wind sways the trees, pixelation rules the airwaves at the Cow mansion..
 
ThePowerCow said:
Is there any other market than Montgomery where the towers for the major network affiliates are 30 to 40 miles away from the city in three directions.
Fine when the winds are calm, but one the wind sways the trees, pixelation rules the airwaves at the Cow mansion..
Click to expand...
Yes, but it really depends on the market. For every one like Atlanta or Birmingham where the towers are tall and right in the center of the market, there's one like Montgomery where everyone is pretty far out of town.

In Montgomery, of course, that's partly the result of WAKA having moved in from Selma years ago to create a "market" that's huge geographically and impossible for any single station to completely cover. (That sort of happened to Birmingham too, once Anniston and Tuscaloosa were rolled into the market - except for ABC, which has transmitters in those cities, viewers need cable or satellite to watch their "local" Bham stations.)

There are some that are even worse. The "Santa Barbara" market stretches up 100 miles of rough California coast to San Luis Obispo. All the TV towers for Fort Myers are way at the north end of the market, and if you're in Naples you're nearly 50 miles from the sites.

Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo in Michigan is another bad example. The NBC and CBS stations are on tall towers between the two main cities, 20-plus miles out of town from each. Fox is closer to GR. There are two separate ABC stations, one way north of Grand Rapids and one way east of Kalamazoo.

You needed an outdoor antenna and a rotor to get them all in the analog era, and it's worse now.

So no, you're not alone with the situation there!
 
Another example is the Paducah/Cape Girardeau/Harrisburg market. If you're in downtown Paducah, only NBC (WPSD) is within 25 miles westerly. ABC is 40 miles due north, and FOX and CBS come from Cape Girardeau which is to the northwest by ~50 miles

It's a weird conglomeration of small cities into a massive geographic market. There's not a lot of satellite stations east of the Great Plains, but this market has one (KPOB-TV, satellite of WSIL), along with several translators. All of the weirdness is because the market is composed of several TV stations that are licensed to all three of the headline cities. Harrisburg is a particularly odd duck. There aren't many full-power commercial TV stations licensed to cities with populations under 10,000!
 
For Iowa City, a lot of the TV towers are closer to Cedar Rapids, other than KIIN (which is Iowa PBS). KWKB in West Branch used to be a WB affiliate, but it’s been an independent religious channel for several years. KCRG-TV just upgraded its tower, so it may put a signal into Iowa City now, but it didn’t in the past.
 
Compared to some of these examples, the Mobile-Pensacola market is pretty tame. If you're in Mobile or Pensacola, you're basically aiming your antenna one way — to a point in between the two cities. The exception is WFBD, whose tower is about as geographically as far out to the edge of the market's defined boundaries as possible, with a site on the AL/FL border in rural Escambia County. WPAN used to be another anomaly with their tower right on the beach east of Pensacola but now it's up north of Cantonment so it's closer to be in-line with the others if you're shooting from Pensacola.

I'm south of both cities in Baldwin County, so for me I've got about a 45° sweep between the easternmost (WKRG) and westernmost (WFBD) stations. Getting the full power stations with an outdoor antenna is not bad as long as I stick to the true-locals but the LPTVs and WFBD are much trickier to get and require a rotor.

Our other onion in the ointment is WALA, who is on RF channel 9. I've found it's only reliable if I'm pointed dead-nuts at the tower even with an outdoor VHF/UHF antenna; their LPTV outlet that carries a simulcast of their main Fox channel along with Telemundo is on UHF but is so low powered that it also doesn't come in unless I'm pointed right at the tower. So, I either get Fox on UHF or VHF and not some of the more distant stations, or the more distant stations and put up with constant breakups on the VHF 9 signal.
 
WCOV put their main channel on the low power WALE 17.3 and that helps a little. WSFA did it for a couple of weeks on WBXM-LD then switched that to their internet feed, which is "Local News Live" when newcasts aren't on. ATSC 3 (or whatever it's called) can't get here soon enough.
 
This site might interest some of you, when you open the link, it is looking at Montgomery, AL, - to find a different market (area) under TOOLS go to SIGNAL SEARCH MAP then when map appears, choose area by zooming in and moving "blue arrow on map" to desired location, then press GO at bottom of MAP.

they are various adjustments you can make, as to how information is shown, if you use site and explore it, you'll pick it up. Basically my explanation should get you started,

https://www.rabbitears.info/searchmap.php?request=result&study_id=2078263
 
fybush said:
There are some that are even worse. The "Santa Barbara" market stretches up 100 miles of rough California coast to San Luis Obispo.
Click to expand...

Over the years, that market's situation has improved somewhat ... or at least, changed. KEYT/3 is up on Broadcast Peak and has a signal that covers the entire market (other than a few terrain-shielded areas). Four years ago, the CBS affiliation moved from KCOY/12 in Santa Maria -- which does not have a viewable signal on the Santa Barbara side of the Santa Ynez Mountains -- to KEYT's .2 subchannel (and still brands as KCOY). MyNetwork is on the .3 subchannel of KEYT.

The NBC affiliate is KSBY/6 in San Luis Obispo, which again is terrain-shielded from S.B., so anyone watching OTA there does so via translator K10PV-D; Fox is on 12.2 and LPTV KKFX-LD/24. CW is on subchannels of both KCOY and KKFX; Telemundo, Univisión and Unimás are largely on LPTVs and translators, but Telemundo is also the primary network for KCOY.

PBS is via the Los Angeles affiliates ... a channel 16 translator in the north, rebroadcasting KCET/28 and a channel 31 translator that carries KOCE/50 (and identifies that as their primary in PSIP).

There are also a few "fill-in" translators for the "big three" affiliates in their terrain-shielded areas.

Because of all that, cable penetration is still higher than the industry average in that market.
 
fybush said:
You needed an outdoor antenna and a rotor to get them all in the analog era, and it's worse now.

So no, you're not alone with the situation there!
Click to expand...
My late father-in-law lived five miles outside of Selma had just such an antenna aimed at Montgomery. It was installed back in the 1980s in the analog days to get reliable signals from the three networks. Post-DTV transition, it was incredible to pick up stray signals from Pensacola, Columbus, and even WSB Atlanta, but the locals were still unreliable and prone to pixelating. Ultimately he got Dish Network and the antenna never got used again.
I checked the coax last year and found that one of the satellite installers - he switched from Dish to DirecTV and back again - must have cut it at some point. :cry:
 


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