Lexington, KY (December 7, 1981)

[ohdxer]

And, of course, if I would stop and think about it for a second, WKYT does precisely that every day, in that at least two of their daily newscasts are simulcast on WYMT. Obviously they have some way (fiber, microwave, or satellite) to get their signal to WYMT, not to mention that WYMT's master control is there (this per Wikipedia).

There's no reason WYMT couldn't have its news originated from the WKYT studios, if need be.

I was in Eastern Kentucky a few years ago, and I recall that WYMT carried the WKYT newscasts at noon and 5 PM weekdays.

I believe that years ago it also used to carry the 11 PM WKYT newscasts on the weekends. But it now carry the 11 PM WYMT newscasts on weekends.

 

[IM42A]

I was in Eastern Kentucky a few years ago, and I recall that WYMT carried the WKYT newscasts at noon and 5 PM weekdays.

I believe that years ago it also used to carry the 11 PM WKYT newscasts on the weekends. But it now carry the 11 PM WYMT newscasts on weekends.

This enables Lexington newscasts to get throughout all of Eastern Kentucky, and even into border areas of Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Only the area north of I-64 (Boyd, Greenup, and Carter counties) are missing out. OTA reception of WKYT is possible in many areas of Rowan and Lewis counties.

This gives WKYT news quite a reach.

 

[IM42A]

Martin is in Floyd County, which is the C-H market, so WYMT couldn't invoke must-carry.

All counties fall into one and only one television market. So far as I am aware, the in-market network affiliate can claim exclusive rights for cable companies to carry only their station, unless an OOM station is on the significantly viewed list (per the FCC), or unless there is some kind of "grandfather" arrangement. Even then, again AFAIK, the OOM's stations simultaneous network offerings have to be blacked out, or covered over with the in-market affiliate's signal in that time frame. I don't know how Martin cable gets by with not carrying WOWK.

Quite by accident, I found out this evening that, per both TVTV.us and Martin cable's website, WOWK is once again on the latter, if indeed it was ever gone (I say this because TVTV is not the most reliable source of channel lineups). Maybe people asked for it back. Or maybe WOWK threw a fit. Don't know.

Here's the lineup page for Inter Mountain Cable (now called GTV):

Channel Lineup

 

[Gravel Switch]

I always wondered what WDRB's signal quality looked like when it was on the Irvine, Kentucky CATV system. Maybe with parabolics sitting up on elevated terrain surrounding Irvine, but it still must've been a little rough at that distance from Floyds Knob, Indiana.

 

[IM42A]

I always wondered what WDRB's signal quality looked like when it was on the Irvine, Kentucky CATV system. Maybe with parabolics sitting up on elevated terrain surrounding Irvine, but it still must've been a little rough at that distance from Floyds Knob, Indiana.

Hard to say. It would have been right at about 110 miles and some change. Per Television Factbook, they also carried WSVN-47 Norton VA (later WSBN) at a somewhat lesser distance, but over even more unforgiving terrain. (For all that effort they could have just tried WCET if PBS diversity was what they were after.) At some point they also carried WBIR, about the same distance but with a solid VHF signal. They were in the neighborhood of 90-110 miles from everything except Lexington (Louisville, Cincinnati, Huntington, Norton, Knoxville), but of course WKYH was closer.

 

[Gravel Switch]

Hard to say. It would have been right at about 110 miles and some change. Per Television Factbook, they also carried WSVN-47 Norton VA (later WSBN) at a somewhat lesser distance, but over even more unforgiving terrain. (For all that effort they could have just tried WCET if PBS diversity was what they were after.) At some point they also carried WBIR, about the same distance but with a solid VHF signal. They were in the neighborhood of 90-110 miles from everything except Lexington (Louisville, Cincinnati, Huntington, Norton, Knoxville), but of course WKYH was closer.

At one point, they carried WCPO and WKRC from Cincinnati, but in the early 1980s, the CATV system manager indicated that WCPO would go “in and out” reception-wise when WLJC/Beattyville enforced must carry which knocked WCPO off the system.

 

[IM42A]

At one point, they carried WCPO and WKRC from Cincinnati, but in the early 1980s, the CATV system manager indicated that WCPO would go “in and out” reception-wise when WLJC/Beattyville enforced must carry which knocked WCPO off the system.

Anything from Louisville or Cincinnati would be kind of a reach for Irvine, especially given the terrain.

Oddly enough, per TVTV.us, WYMT isn't carried in Irvine on cable. There gets to be a certain point where WYMT's concentration upon the mountain region of Eastern Kentucky isn't really of interest to viewers, even though it might be available OTA, and Irvine probably falls into that category. It's in the middle of that edge of the Bluegrass called the Knobs, kind of culturally and economically distinct from the mountains.

On a somewhat related note, I've found it it interesting how the area of Virginia immediately adjacent to Kentucky, Wise, Norton, and that area, has come to see WYMT as their "local" station, indeed, WYMT runs most of its newscasts on H&I 57.2 as well as on 57.1, to get around objections by WJHL to carriage of a second CBS affiliate on cable there. Put another way, if cable can't carry WYMT-57.1, viewers can still get their local news on 57.2. (Obviously both subchannels would be equally accessible OTA.)

 

[Gravel Switch]

Actually, it looks like WYMT is carried by the Irvine CATV system according to their channel lineup:

https://users.neo.registeredsite.com/9/3/4/22916439/assets/2024_LINEUP95941.pdf

 

[Mr Tony]

WYMT runs most of its newscasts on H&I 57.2 as well as on 57.1, to get around objections by WJHL to carriage of a second CBS affiliate on cable there

I think it’s more of not allowing people to switch over to watch H&I. I’ve seen this done in a few markets.
Eastern North Dakota (Fargo/grand forks) ABC (WDAY Fargo/WDAZ Grand Forks) they do the same thing with the -3 WDAY/Z Xtra channel. From 4-7 it’s news on both the main station and -3 (difference is 5:30 when National news is on. The -3 shows entertainment tonight). Heck at 9pm Xtra has news and they also interrupt -2 (true crime) to show same newscast. Then at 10pm news on both the-1 & -3.

 

[IM42A]

Actually, it looks like WYMT is carried by the Irvine CATV system according to their channel lineup:

https://users.neo.registeredsite.com/9/3/4/22916439/assets/2024_LINEUP95941.pdf

I was just going by TVTV.us, which is an aggregator and doesn't always contain the most accurate information.

 

[IM42A]

I think it’s more of not allowing people to switch over to watch H&I. I’ve seen this done in a few markets.
Eastern North Dakota (Fargo/grand forks) ABC (WDAY Fargo/WDAZ Grand Forks) they do the same thing with the -3 WDAY/Z Xtra channel. From 4-7 it’s news on both the main station and -3 (difference is 5:30 when National news is on. The -3 shows entertainment tonight). Heck at 9pm Xtra has news and they also interrupt -2 (true crime) to show same newscast. Then at 10pm news on both the-1 & -3.

Not clear what you mean by "not allowing people to switch over to watch H&I". Do you mean that the newscasts are simulcast on both subchannels, thus ensuring that viewers won't switch away from the news on 57.1 to watch something on H&I instead? (And what about 57.3 Outlaw?)

In any case, it allows cable viewers in Virginia to see the closest thing they have to "local" news without getting WJHL's feathers ruffled by having folks switching away from their CBS programming (I guess they could simsub, but that's a PITA for both cable operators and viewers), it just requires a bit of viewer education ("hey, if you want WYMT news, we're over here on H&I too"). I don't suppose that WAPK-CD would be willing to kick up a fuss over losing a handful of H&I viewers on the edge of the Tri-Cities market, and I'm not clear that an LPTV/Class A station, which doesn't enjoy must-carry status to begin with, would be able to invoke market exclusivity on a minor diginet.

But this does raise the question of whether a low-power station that is affiliated with one of the Big Four could invoke exclusivity if a cable company wanted to import a full-power affiliate of that network from out of market. Cable operators don't have to carry LPTVs at all. The only leverage that would exist, is if that LPTV were associated with a larger full-power station that is popular in the market --- WHSV Harrisonburg or WTAP Parkersburg come immediately to mind --- and could say "if you don't carry our co-owned LPTV network affiliate, you can't carry us either" (but all of WHSV's and WTAP's LPTV major-network affiliates are also carried as subchannels of the main station). Anybody know?

(WKPT has become basically a full-power satellator of various diginets, the Tri-Cities market always had problems hosting separate affiliates of all four networks anyway.)

 

[Mr Tony]

Not clear what you mean by "not allowing people to switch over to watch H&I". Do you mean that the newscasts are simulcast on both subchannels, thus ensuring that viewers won't switch away from the news on 57.1 to watch something on H&I instead? (And what about 57.3 Outlaw?)

correct especially if they are OTA only. The contract for H&I is probably different than Outlaw. Since WYMT already interrupts H&I for sports they can pre-empt programming for news. That is how it is here where I am in Mankato, MN. We have Black 365 subchannel that gets pre-empted daily for other programming (sports mainly) but CW+ they dont touch other than the callsign at the top of the hour.

In any case, it allows cable viewers in Virginia to see the closest thing they have to "local" news without getting WJHL's feathers ruffled by having folks switching away from their CBS programming (I guess they could simsub, but that's a PITA for both cable operators and viewers), it just requires a bit of viewer education ("hey, if you want WYMT news, we're over here on H&I too"). I don't suppose that WAPK-CD would be willing to kick up a fuss over losing a handful of H&I viewers on the edge of the Tri-Cities market, and I'm not clear that an LPTV/Class A station, which doesn't enjoy must-carry status to begin with, would be able to invoke market exclusivity on a minor diginet.

The thing is WYMT doesn't have a "you have to carry it" coverage area in any county (according to FCC not even their local county). Plenty of cable systems can do simsub if need be. Thats how it is on Charter/Spectrum cable in Mankato. They have KEYC (the local CBS) and WCCO Minneapolis due to the FCC allowing them to (Minneapolis stations are Significantly Viewed in Blue Earth County (where Mankato is). They just throw channel 12 as an "overlay" on WCCO 4 for anytime there is a duplicate program on both. From what I understand they cant just carry the subchannel and not the main station.

But this does raise the question of whether a low-power station that is affiliated with one of the Big Four could invoke exclusivity if a cable company wanted to import a full-power affiliate of that network from out of market.

Considering cable is kinda going bye bye and people are dropping it, its a moot point. When Mankato got a LP NBC (KMNF-LP) Spectrum replaced KARE NBC with KMNF even though KARE could be carried (the other Minneapolis stations still are on cable). Satellite and streaming its just the stations licensed to the market (or if there isn't one they can get a neighboring station)
The county north of us and the towns (St Peter and Le Sueur) carry both NBC from Minneapolis and Mankato. The note is that Mankato has only been CBS since 1960 and FOX subchannel since 2007. NBC has been around for 6 years.

To answer your question if there is a low powered station I doubt cable would add a full powered station of same network since the full powered station has probably been there forever. Low powered network stations are way newer than the old full powered station so could they remove the full powered network? Sure. Will they add a out of market station? Probably not.

Cable operators don't have to carry LPTVs at all.

while that is true if its a Big 4 network (which is 99% co-owned with a full power station) they'll get it carried. Satellite/streaming doesnt have to and if its a big 4 they will but others they don't usually carry it.

The only leverage that would exist, is if that LPTV were associated with a larger full-power station that is popular in the market --- WHSV Harrisonburg or WTAP Parkersburg come immediately to mind --- and could say "if you don't carry our co-owned LPTV network affiliate, you can't carry us either" (but all of WHSV's and WTAP's LPTV major-network affiliates are also carried as subchannels of the main station). Anybody know?

Big owners use that as leverage. Carry our LP nets (if they are a Big 4 network) or you don't get our station you've carried for a long time. Subchannels fall in the same boat a LP stations. If they are a network station the odds of being carried are pretty much a given.

 

[IM42A]

The thing is WYMT doesn't have a "you have to carry it" coverage area in any county (according to FCC not even their local county).

WYMT enjoys cable carriage throughout a wide swath of Eastern Kentucky, all the way from Louisa down to Somerset. There would be huge pushback in this area if cable didn't carry WYMT. Their cable coverage area spans four markets, Lexington, Knoxville, Tri-Cities, and Charleston-Huntington.

Sadly, Dish Network doesn't carry it outside of the southeasten half of the Lexington market. That is a huge bone of contention for viewers in the other three markets.

 

[Mr Tony]

WYMT enjoys cable carriage throughout a wide swath of Eastern Kentucky, all the way from Louisa down to Somerset. There would be huge pushback in this area if cable didn't carry WYMT. Their cable coverage area spans four markets, Lexington, Knoxville, Tri-Cities, and Charleston-Huntington.

Yes I am aware of that. My point was there is no county where they HAVE to carry it due to the FCC saying they ‘should’. It’s just like here in Minnesota where KEYC is carried in 5 markets. Mankato, Minneapolis, Sioux Falls (SW corner of MN), Des Moines and Rochester, MN markets. Not the full market but parts of it due to location. Minneapolis stations are also carried in parts of those same markets except Des Moines.

Sadly, Dish Network doesn't carry it outside of the southeasten half of the Lexington market. That is a huge bone of contention for viewers in the other three markets.

Satellite and streaming services have different rules (which I know I mentioned before). They can only carry the stations from the market. They can’t carry a station outside of the market unless there is none. Cable uses rules from the 70s. Satellite and streaming has rules given to them in the 2000s (satellite) or current (streaming). On streaming if you do not have an ABC (like my market) the ABC they give you is the National ‘feed’ of ABC which when there is no National program they repeat something. On weekends they like to show ‘what would you do?’ When there is nothing live to show.

 

[IM42A]

Yes I am aware of that. My point was there is no county where they HAVE to carry it due to the FCC saying they ‘should’.

There's not a cable company anywhere in the area I described, that would have to be told they "should" carry it. It is by far the preferred news station in that area. People there regard it as their local station, market boundaries notwithstanding. A cable company that didn't carry it would lose subscribers left and right, unless it were a case of viewers of the back side of a mountain who can't get any TV at all without it, and even in those cases, many would just migrate over to Dish Network if they were in the portion of the Lexington market that gets WYMT via satellite.

 

[Mr Tony]

There's not a cable company anywhere in the area I described, that would have to be told they "should" carry it. It is by far the preferred news station in that area.

I was making the point that the FCC doesnt have it listed in any county (not even Perry where Hazard is) that could carry it due to Sig Viewed. That's pretty rare

People there regard it as their local station, market boundaries notwithstanding. A cable company that didn't carry it would lose subscribers left and right,

You really need to quit living in 1998 (your words at the other site). Anybody with a half ass internet feed can view the news on the WYMT app daily. I'm in MN and view it occasionally. You dont HAVE to have it on cable. I get its the mountains but internet is much better than it was lets say 5 years ago. Where my familys lake house is in Northern Minnesota there was no internet option wired (it was satellite only). Now as of a couple years ago there are TWO companies offering wired internet there (one is 30MB thru phone line and the other is fibre and up to 1G).

 

[IM42A]

I was making the point that the FCC doesnt have it listed in any county (not even Perry where Hazard is) that could carry it due to Sig Viewed. That's pretty rare...

You really need to quit living in 1998 (your words at the other site). Anybody with a half ass internet feed can view the news on the WYMT app daily. I'm in MN and view it occasionally. You dont HAVE to have it on cable. I get its the mountains but internet is much better than it was lets say 5 years ago. Where my familys lake house is in Northern Minnesota there was no internet option wired (it was satellite only). Now as of a couple years ago there are TWO companies offering wired internet there (one is 30MB thru phone line and the other is fibre and up to 1G).

The FCC are the ones who are living in 1988. Their SV list is archaic. They think WLOS is still significantly viewed in Harlan and Knott counties, and that nothing except WSAZ is SV in Magoffin County (in all fairness, WSAZ might be the only full-service commercial station, aside from WYMT, available OTA there).

I am quite aware that WYMT news (or news from many, many other stations) can be viewed online or on an app, only problem is, unless someone uses a computer/smartphone, and nothing but that, they're probably going to want to watch their news on a regular TV set. If, just for the sake of argument, no local stations were carried on cable here (Columbia SC), and they brought in Charlotte stations instead, I wouldn't say to myself, oh, that doesn't matter, I'll just watch WIS news (for instance) online, it's local, but that's okay, I don't mind not being able to watch it on regular TV. No, I'd be thinking, this is a perfectly good local TV station, with all my local news, but I'm having to view it online instead because reasons. That's about the situation viewers in Hazard, Pikeville, Harlan, Salyersville, Prestonsburg, and so on, would be in, if their cable providers didn't carry WYMT.

 

[NoWayNoCC]

The fact that WYMT doesn't appear on the significantly viewed list for any county has to be a misprint.

 

[IM42A]

The fact that WYMT doesn't appear on the significantly viewed list for any county has to be a misprint.

I doubt it. It should appear as SV in at least a couple of dozen counties in eastern Kentucky (Kentucky counties tend to be small). It looks to be the original list from way back when, with new stations (such as WVAH and WSTR) added at some point after they went on the air. WYMT has existed, first as WKYH, since 1969, which is before the first SV list was created in 1972. No doubt its viewership in any county at all was minuscule at that time --- challenging terrain, high UHF channel, suboptimal UHF tuners, many viewers in poorer counties having VHF-only sets, shaky transmitter, fairly low power, all these things would have militated against WKYH "catching on" as it has today. For NBC, southeastern Kentucky viewers would just have watched WCYB, not because it had any local nexus, but simply because it was the easiest one to get, with a halfway-watchable picture, available with a basic VHF antenna, and with a low channel number. Ditto WSAZ, though they did make an honest attempt to provide somewhat local news coverage to the area north of Pikeville at least.

The SV list always strikes me as being from back in the days when viewers picked up pretty much anything OTA that they could, or in the case of distant stations such as WLOS in Harlan and Knott counties, from when cable operators did much the same thing. In many cases it bears little relation to actual viewing habits in those counties in the year 2025 (or even 2016 when AFAIK the list was last updated). As a kind of side note, counties such as Mineral County WV are simply listed as "over 90% cable penetration", with no stations at all listed for those counties.

The FCC needs to create a brand-new SV list based upon viewing habits today, start from scratch, and just ditch the old one.

 

[IM42A]

The FCC are the ones who are living in 1988.

I meant 1998, though 1988 (or 1978 for that matter) is a more accurate way to describe the SV list.