Have you ever seen an incorrect station ID?

[vchimpanzee]

Two stations in Charlotte NC are co-owned. I know I was watching My 12. I checked the TiVo listings and the program I was watching was there.

But Fox 46 is co-owned and early in a movie I taped that's what appeared in the lower right corner of the screen.

Later in the movie, My 12 was there as it should have been.

 

[onairb2014]

Not exactly an 'incorrect ID', but in the early '80s in San Francisco, when it actually still rained in the Bay Area, a heavy storm caused an outage/damage at the Sutro broadcast tower, effectively knocking every station off the air for a few hours. The only thing that was transmitted during the outage was a station ID slide for KQED channel 9 (PBS), which somehow ended up on one of the other stations (I want to say KTVU, channel 2).

 

[1L6E6VHF]

One night more than thirty years ago, when stations would not air programming in the pre-dawn hours, I saw a channel 3 station in Saskatchewan showing the IDs of the channel 5 stations in Chicago, Cleveland and Bay City. Sporadic-E skip was feeding those stations to the channel 3 station and sending their signal back down to me in Detroit.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Two stations in Charlotte NC are co-owned. I know I was watching My 12. I checked the TiVo listings and the program I was watching was there.

But Fox 46 is co-owned and early in a movie I taped that's what appeared in the lower right corner of the screen.

Later in the movie, My 12 was there as it should have been.

They undoubtedly have a common master control and whatever automated system is responsible for the ID "bug" in the corner was programmed wrong at the movie's start, then was corrected when someone noticed. Or it was programmed wrong for the early segments of the movie and correctly for the later segments.

Oh, for manual control rooms again ...

 

[nathannah]

Retro TV was chock full of incorrect ID's among their stations for years and years. My station for the network was on DT3 but until they were mercifully taken off in 2011, they always identified as the DT2 signal. The station had to throw in a 24/7 DT3 bug because they finally just gave up trying to find someone at Equity or Luken to fix the issue.

There's also some stations that identify with "-DT" calls at the top of the hour rather than their FCC "-TV" calls (WDJT in Milwaukee is the most apparent); I haven't seen them go after anyone at all for that since it has 'television' somewhere in the initialism, and there's multiple stations I'm sure that forget the "-TV' suffix and identify by calls-only.

 

[newsmark]

For stations that picked up another station's signal, either as their primary network feed or as a backup, used to have this happen fairly often.

Where I worked in Tyler, Texas, we had our own network line and fed a clean feed to our semi-satellite station in Lufkin, Texas. But occasionally the microwave line bringing the network signal to us would fail, either because of weather conditions or a power failure. The backup was for our Lufkin station to pickup up a Houston station off-air. We, in turn, would pick up the Lufkin station, off-air.

One night, the situation you're describing happened twice in about ten minutes, during Monday Night Football. I looked up and saw a super over the game: "13 KTRK Houston." It was followed by "9 KTRE Lufkin-Nacogdoches." And of course, I had to follow it with "7 KLTV Tyler-Longview." There was really no way to avoid it, since we didn't know exactly when KTRK would ID.

We REALLY didn't know they'd do it again in 10 minutes. So within that short period, we had 6 station IDs and 4 of them were wrong.

 

[mvcg66b3r]

How about those stations IDing with the wrong city, or the city of license listed second? (COL in bold)
"KPNX Phoenix/Mesa"
"WOI-DT Des Moines/Ames"
"WLNE-TV Providence/New Bedford"
"WNET New York" (Newark NJ)

And watch this treasure from WGBO (now Univision), with words inserted between the calls and COL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDF-JZwli2g

And it happens on radio too. See this thread:
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?618219-Skipped-Legal-IDs-or-Giving-them-Wrong-FCC

 

[K.M. Richards]

Rather than make a mess quoting the three previous posters, I'm just going to post what my understanding of current FCC rules, regulations, and policies is ...

1. There has always been an exception granted to the inadvertent airing of another station's ID when simulcasting or retransmitting. As the poster said ... nothing you can do about it.

2. On television, as long as the COL is somewhere in the same line as the calls and in the same font size, it's considered legal. I don't know how to explain WNET unless they do an actual legal with COL Newark at a different point in time than what the poster saw.

3. Digital subchannels do not have to identify with their "dot" PSIP channel number. The calls/COL are sufficient.

4. While "-DT" is supposed to be an option that a station chooses as part of their official calls, the FCC seems to be ignoring that and allowing it for any full-power digital TV station. Here in L.A., KCBS/2, KABC/7, KCAL/9, KCOP/13, KWHY/22, KPXN/30, KTBN/40, KOCE/50, KAZA/54, and KDOC/56 use the "-TV" suffix; KVCR/24, KMEX/34, and KFTR/46 use "-DT"; and KNBC/4, KTLA/5, KTTV/11, KSCI/18, KCET/28, KVEA/52, KJLA/57, KLCS/58, KRCA/62, and KBEH/63 use no suffix. The FCC should have either mandated "-DT" post-transition or left no suffix unless "-TV" was required because of the calls' simultaneous use on AM, FM, or low power. But what can you do once the horse has already gotten out of the barn?

 

[MarcB]

I think subchannels should be ID'd as such.

On Escape TV they just have the regular Channel 3 logo along with WFSB Hartford/New Haven, CT on the screen for their ID. 3.2

On COZI TV they use the regular NBC Connecticut Logo along with WVIT New Britain/Hartford for their ID. 30.2

On Antenna TV they use the regular FOX CT Logo but it does say WTIC DT 61.2 Hartford

On This TV they use the regular WCCT Logo but it does say WCCT DT 20.2 Waterbury/Hartford.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Every ID slide I can find for WNET shows a proper ID of WNET NEWARK followed by an animation whereby NEWARK is replaced by NEW YORK.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I think subchannels should be ID'd as such.

On Escape TV they just have the regular Channel 3 logo along with WFSB Hartford/New Haven, CT on the screen for their ID. 3.2

On COZI TV they use the regular NBC Connecticut Logo along with WVIT New Britain/Hartford for their ID. 30.2

On Antenna TV they use the regular FOX CT Logo but it does say WTIC DT 61.2 Hartford

On This TV they use the regular WCCT Logo but it does say WCCT DT 20.2 Waterbury/Hartford.

I'd prefer the subchannel "bug" be the network logo. For legal IDs, just super a line of text next to it.

 

[Mr Tony]

There's also some stations that identify with "-DT" calls at the top of the hour rather than their FCC "-TV" calls (WDJT in Milwaukee is the most apparent); I haven't seen them go after anyone at all for that since it has 'television' somewhere in the initialism, and there's multiple stations I'm sure that forget the "-TV' suffix and identify by calls-only.

I know WCCO (CBS) in Minneapolis ID"s as TV & DT in their ID. It shows as such (they have 2 satellite stations)
WCCO 4 TV/DT MINNEAPOLIS/ST PAUL...KCCO/KCCW 7/12 TV/DT ALEXANDRIA/WALKER

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

That's interesting that the subs don't have to identify their .X position. I guess it's a good thing because the MeTV feed on KUBE 57.4 identifies as 57.5. And that's even after they updated the TOH ID to "thank you Houston" for making it the #1 classic tv network.

 

[Joe_Capitano]

Retro TV was chock full of incorrect ID's among their stations for years and years. (snip!)

I can vouch for that here in Western Washington, albeit with a competing brand.

KVOS, which carries MeTV on its main channel (that's not common), was listed in its top of the hour ID as "KVOS Seattle" rather than "KVOS-TV Bellingham." It certainly doesn't help that MeTV thanks Seattle, where KVOS' broadcast signal is marginal at best and non-existent for many, in the ID spot. BTW: KVOS moved its operations to the facilities of sister station KFFV Seattle shortly before that, but the city of license remained Bellingham, which is "aboot" a half-hour drive south of the US-Canadian border.

That "legal" ID discrepancy changed when the OTA Broadcasting folks decided to start simulcasting KVOS on the x.6 channel of KFFV earlier this year. Both stations' proper legal IDs are now displayed.

 

[Ultimajock]

...there were a couple of early '70s instances where an ID slide for WCBS-TV/2 New York was mistakenly fed over the CBS network line, and aired over several of the network's affiliates, including WBAY-TV/2 Green Bay, where I saw them. One was a slide promoting a WCBS local screening of the Walter Matthau-Carol Burnett movie Pete 'n' Tillie. And there were dozens of times when the switcher at KFIZ-TV/34 Fond du Lac was slow at the lever and allowed IDs for WTMJ-TV/4 and WVTV/18 Milwaukee to go out over their air during Milwaukee Brewers games or Merv Griffin Shows KFIZ would retransmit from OTA signals...

 

[ShawnHill1]

I don't know if this would count, I can remember some instances where TBS, during its "Superstation" days, the local WTBS ID bug (Superstation 17) would slip-in on occasion during certain shows. Not much of a surprise if you think about, as seeing as that 95 percent of TBS' programming was simulcast on to the local Atlanta version.

 

[K.M. Richards]

That "legal" ID discrepancy changed when the OTA Broadcasting folks decided to start simulcasting KVOS on the x.6 channel of KFFV earlier this year. Both stations' proper legal IDs are now displayed.

We have a similar situation in the Los Angeles market, but the other way around. MeTV is officially on KDOC/56.3 Anaheim but a few years ago started simulcasting on KVME/20.1 Bishop (except for some early morning paid programming and religious programs on KVME) and the subchannels for both stations are in the tiny font at the bottom of the screen.

Bishop, for those who don't know, is an anomaly in the DMA geography, being far from Los Angeles along the Nevada border. It became part of the Los Angeles DMA because the community's first television service came from (literally) the earliest translators to be licensed, retransmitting CBS and NBC's O&O's in L.A. (http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/translators.html)

Mike Hagerty, who lived in Bishop for part of his life, can elaborate ... if I can convince him to come read this (he tends to only haunt the Los Angeles radio board).

 

[michael hagerty]

We have a similar situation in the Los Angeles market, but the other way around. MeTV is officially on KDOC/56.3 Anaheim but a few years ago started simulcasting on KVME/20.1 Bishop (except for some early morning paid programming and religious programs on KVME) and the subchannels for both stations are in the tiny font at the bottom of the screen.

Bishop, for those who don't know, is an anomaly in the DMA geography, being far from Los Angeles along the Nevada border. It became part of the Los Angeles DMA because the community's first television service came from (literally) the earliest translators to be licensed, retransmitting CBS and NBC's O&O's in L.A. (http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/translators.html)

Mike Hagerty, who lived in Bishop for part of his life, can elaborate ... if I can convince him to come read this (he tends to only haunt the Los Angeles radio board).

You've convinced me, KMR, though I'm not sure what I can add.

Bishop is 270 miles north of Los Angeles, 200 miles south of Reno and 80 miles east of Fresno (but there's 14,000 feet of granite called the Sierra Nevada mountains separating Bishop and Fresno). As a result, TV signals don't penetrate, and the area is sparsely populated (Bishop is the largest of four towns spread out over 60 miles north to south in the Owens Valley, and it has fewer than 4,000 people.

To get service into Bishop, cable was strung up the valley from Los Angeles shortly after World War II. My dad was one of the men working on the project, which brought TV signals from the then-new stations atop L.A.'s Mt. Wilson to the Owens Valley. From about 1950 on, people in Bishop have been able to watch Los Angeles stations (assuming they subscribed to cable). The FCC authorized emergency service via free over-the-air translators of the three main network stations (CBS, NBC and ABC). You could also get KOLO-TV from Reno, which was CBS from 1953 until 1967 and ABC from then until today.

Over time, most people switched from the weak, interference-prone but free translators to cable (especially in the 70s, when Time Warner came in, bought Bishop cable and began adding channels beyond the OTA L.A. signals). Now, most of the action is in satellite.

At some point, the Owens Valley went from being a fringe area to being included in the Los Angeles television market, despite the distance. That meant that a station originating in Bishop would be considered an L.A. station and would benefit from the re-trans rules, giving it coverage in Los Angeles on cable and satellite. Completely the reverse of how it began.

 

[deepstblu]

I could swear that when I was a kid, during an NBC network show (I think it was Adam-12, which gives you an idea of how long ago it was) I saw a flash of an ID slide for KPRC-TV Houston broadcast over KYW-TV Philadelphia. I also recall a stray WCBS-TV ID getting out over WCAU-TV, with audio--an announcer simply saying "Channel 2, New York."

But even weirder than IDs, I've seen programming from the wrong network come through. Another one from when I was a kid--one Saturday morning, I caught Channel 6 in Philly running the audio from their scheduled ABC cartoon, Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down, with visuals from whatever was on NBC at the time! Some years later in Chicago--would have been 1980, I think--early one Sunday morning I heard CBS-owned WBBM radio run an NBC TOH newscast. Eventually the local news anchor came on, apologized and wondered if WMAQ had gotten the CBS hourly. (I had switched over to check on exactly that, but MAQ was running a religious program and didn't air the news at that hour.)

 

[K.M. Richards]

Some of these are explainable, others aren't.

I also recall a stray WCBS-TV ID getting out over WCAU-TV, with audio--an announcer simply saying "Channel 2, New York."

Someone in network master control left a pot open on the audio board and the local announcer got sent out over the network, most likely.

one Saturday morning, I caught Channel 6 in Philly running the audio from their scheduled ABC cartoon, Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down, with visuals from whatever was on NBC at the time!

Probably originated at AT&T's video division. Every video feed and associated audio feed had to be switched manually (and separately) for stations that had more than one network affiliation -- that was the real reason for sixty-second local commercial breaks between programs, to give the AT&T techs enough time to switch everyone who needed to be switched -- and occasionally the wrong circuit would get switched and a station would get the wrong video or audio.

Some years later in Chicago--would have been 1980, I think--early one Sunday morning I heard CBS-owned WBBM radio run an NBC TOH newscast.

That undoubtedly was a bungle at the local telco central office where NBC got put on the local loop to WBBM. I'm sure some engineer called the unlisted central office number that all stations had for use in such cases, screaming bloody murder.