Lafayette becomes a "complete" market with My Network addition

[Mr Tony]

Boy Lafayette just keeps adding stations. Recently WPBY-LD (RF35 PSIP 35) added MeTv & My Network to 35-2. They will also be carrying the Cubs/White Sox games that are broadcast on WGN9.

Crazy how a couple years ago they were just a 1 station market (WLFI CBS) and now they have all 7 commercial networks (CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, MY, CW, ION)

timeline
pre Jan 2015

WLFI 18-1 CBS HD
18-2 weather which was replaced by GetTv in January 2015
Ion added to 18-3 in October 2015
CW HD added in August 2017 to 18-2. GetTv moves to 18-4

WPBI-LD started in October 2016
16-1 FOX HD
16-2 NBC HD
ABC was added in SD around July 2017

WPBY-LD started around July 2017
35-1 ABC HD
35-2 Me/My SD added in the last month

so to go from 2 stations to 8 in a couple years is pretty good

 

[gr8oldies]

WLFI blew it by not grabbing at least ABC and NBC. Cable viewers won't be able to get any of the Indianapolis stations anymore.

 

[KeithE4]

And still no PBS, despite the fact that Purdue University had one of the original experimental TV setups, in the 1930s. It's one of the few markets with more than one network affiliate with no public TV, not counting cable/satellite or translators (Rockford IL and Bakersfield CA are among the others).

 

[Mr Tony]

WLFI blew it by not grabbing at least ABC and NBC. Cable viewers won't be able to get any of the Indianapolis stations anymore.

actually right now both cable companies (Comcast and Metronet) carry WRTV and WTHR alongside the Lafayette nets (and both still in HD too)

edit: looks like its staying

https://www.jconline.com/story/news...p-indys-wthr-wrtv-lafayette-lineup/534227002/

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Back in March, when Comcast tried to take WTHR and WRTV – the last steps in a gradual purge of Indianapolis broadcast networks available on the cable company’s Lafayette lineup – off the air, engineers ran into technical trouble that forced them to resume the feeds out of Indy.

But the day-and-a-half of blank screens for WTHR, an NBC affiliate, and WRTV, an ABC affiliate, was enough to give Comcast pause. The calls the office on Creasy Lane fielded were substantial – and angry – said Mike Wilson, public relations director for Comcast in Indiana.

“It gave us an opportunity to listen to the public,” Wilson said Friday. “We got a real measure of how strong that connection is between Indy and Lafayette, especially when it comes to news.”

As a result, Wilson said Friday that Comcast is changing course.

WRTV and WTHR will remain in Lafayette’s lineup, even though the local designated market area for those network affiliates now belongs to a handful of upstart stations owned by Star City Broadcasting of Lafayette.

On June 19, WRTV will shift from Comcast’s Channel 6 to Channel 1189, and WTHR will move up the dial from Comcast’s Channel 12 to Channel 1192.

“We believe the decision balances the needs of WBPI and the customers who want Indy broadcasting,” Wilson said. “The channel separation (between low and high channel numbers) is the courteous thing to do for the local broadcaster. It’s their market, technically.”

The news took Star City Broadcasting by surprise Friday. Mike Reed, a co-owner of Star City Broadcasting, had no comment Friday morning, asking for time to review Comcast’s decision.

General managers with WRTV and WTHR did not immediately respond to calls for comment Friday.

“I hate that they feel compelled to move the numbers,” said Tim Costello, a Comcast customer in West Lafayette who watches WTHR for news and severe weather coverage. “On the other hand, it’s better than not to have them at all.”

Here’s the background.

Comcast phone lines were blasted on March 7, when the cable company pulled the plug on WTHR and WRTV, Indianapolis’ NBC and ABC affiliates that had been in the Lafayette channel lineup since the 1970s.

That followed Comcast’s decisions in late 2017 and early 2018 to eliminate Indianapolis Fox affiliate WXIN, CBS affiliate WTTV and the CW (and former CBS) affiliate WISH.

Dumping the stations during that time completed a purge of Indianapolis-based networks from the Lafayette lineup and leaving the Lafayette’s designated market area, known as a DMA, to WLFI – a CBS affiliate for decades – and a set of stations started by Star City Broadcasting.

Star City Broadcasting took its NBC and Fox signals on air on Nov. 1, 2016, and followed with ABC on Aug. 1, 2017. Lafayette previously had no local presence for those three networks, instead getting broadcasts from Indianapolis on Comcast or the cable companies that had come before it.

On Comcast, WPBI is on channels 15 (ABC), 16 (Fox) and 17 (NBC).

At the time, Wilson said Comcast’s decision boiled down to the emerging local ownership in the market and the company’s decision not to provide two affiliates of the same networks in its lineup. He said Star City Broadcasting’s WBPI stations provided “all of the NBC and ABC network programming previously available on the Indianapolis stations, as well as local news and other local programming specifically targeted to the Lafayette area.”

The blowback from customers was strong, particularly from those accustomed to personalities and established news programming in Indianapolis.

Star City has a news operation that feeds its three stations from the same Lafayette newsroom, with broadcasts emanating from a studio hub in Arkansas. Star City management has been working to establish the stations as a part of the local community, whether in news coverage, advertising or charity work, that Indianapolis station would never bother to do.

Ron Dant, a Comcast customer in Lafayette said he finds the WPBI lacking, compared to what he’s used to out of WTHR.

“And all the (Indianapolis) stations that are gone, really,” Dant said. “I consider those stations local.”

Wilson said few, if any, Comcast customers dropped service because of it. (“I’d say most people were telling us they were disappointed more than they were saying, ‘Cancel my service,’” Wilson said.)

But one of Comcast’s emerging competitors in Greater Lafayette, the fiber-optic provider Metronet, has a full complement of Indianapolis stations on its lineup.

On March 8, a day after WTHR and WRTV went dark, they came back on. At the time, Wilson chalked up the confusion to technical difficulties and that Comcast had “rolled everything back until we can assess the situation.”

WTHR and WRTV have been on the air on Comcast’s Lafayette lineup since then. Not so, though, for WXIN, WTTV or WISH, the other Indianapolis stations scrubbed previously.

Wilson said WXIN, WTTV and WISH would not return to the Comcast lineup in Lafayette.

Wilson said customers would not see a change in what they are billed now that WTHR and WRTV will be kept.