MundoFox TX market possibilities

[mmnassour]

I don't think that B&C article is accurate because North Texas (DFW) already has an accuweather channel on WFAA 8.2 which replaced their local news and weather forecast now it is Accuweather and a regional Radar that goes back and forth with a L bar that has weather information

And for that matter, KVUE in Austin already has Accuweather on its .3 channel.

 

[easttxtv]

Just saw a MundoFox promo overnight on KDFW/4. Didn't see any channel number on it, so it could be a 4.2 (?) ... not sure why Ch.4 would promote a network if it's going to air on another station -- or Fox wants them to promote it no matter what station it ends up on (?)

 

[dhett]

Just saw a MundoFox promo overnight on KDFW/4. Didn't see any channel number on it, so it could be a 4.2 (?) ... not sure why Ch.4 would promote a network if it's going to air on another station -- or Fox wants them to promote it no matter what station it ends up on (?)

I think the latter. I saw a MundoFox promo a few weeks ago on my local Fox O&O. Although Fox has a duopoly in Phoenix, MundoFox will be on an LPTV station owned by another unrelated company.

 

[fredcantu]

The MundoFox website just points people to their facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/mundofox

They only have 1,366 likes on June 1. They need to get going. Interesting they have chosen as their logo the letter O from their US Fox Network logo with a circle around it. At first glance I thought the red and white logo was the Target store brand but with the center squished.

 

[arnoldevns]

Just saw a MundoFox promo overnight on KDFW/4. Didn't see any channel number on it, so it could be a 4.2 (?) ... not sure why Ch.4 would promote a network if it's going to air on another station -- or Fox wants them to promote it no matter what station it ends up on (?)

I think the latter. I saw a MundoFox promo a few weeks ago on my local Fox O&O. Although Fox has a duopoly in Phoenix, MundoFox will be on an LPTV station owned by another unrelated company.

If they're willing to use LPTV stations, that opens up a wide range of possibilities for the Dallas-Fort Worth market.

 

[dhett]

Just saw a MundoFox promo overnight on KDFW/4. Didn't see any channel number on it, so it could be a 4.2 (?) ... not sure why Ch.4 would promote a network if it's going to air on another station -- or Fox wants them to promote it no matter what station it ends up on (?)

I think the latter. I saw a MundoFox promo a few weeks ago on my local Fox O&O. Although Fox has a duopoly in Phoenix, MundoFox will be on an LPTV station owned by another unrelated company.

If they're willing to use LPTV stations, that opens up a wide range of possibilities for the Dallas-Fort Worth market.

Press releases say that they have a full-power affiliate in the Phoenix market, which is true. It's just that the full-power station, KMOH-DT, is 200 miles away, in Kingman, with a co-owned LPTV station, KEJR-LD, serving the Phoenix metro area. In Vegas, they'll be on a full-power rimshot, KMCC, which is actually licensed to Laughlin NV and transmits from Dolan Springs AZ. KMCC has an LPTV booster in Vegas (under experimental Special Temporary Authorization with the FCC).

Looks like MundoFox is considering all possibilities.

 

[fredcantu]

Do these rim shots have cable carriage in the metro? That might be a deciding factor.

 

[dhett]

In Las Vegas, KMCC is carried on the most basic cable package, but only with digital cable.

In Phoenix, KMOH/KEJR does not have cable carriage at all. In 2005, Cox successfully petitioned the FCC to drop KMOH/KEJR as a must-carry station, over the objection of Bela, owners of KMOH at the time. Today, Cox carries Tr3s, KMOH's network, but in a Latino package, not basic, and
does not carry any local programming from KMOH/KEJR.

That makes the choice of KMOH/KEJR as an affiliate even more of a mystery.

 

[JHBrandt]

... they have a full-power affiliate in the Phoenix market, which is true. It's just that the full-power station, KMOH-DT, is 200 miles away, in Kingman, with a co-owned LPTV station, KEJR-LD, serving the Phoenix metro area.

Look, I know Arizona has lots of sparsely populated space, but how on Earth is a station 200 miles away from Phoenix considered to be in the Phoenix market?

Seems to me they're stretching the truth a bit :-X

 

[arnoldevns]

... they have a full-power affiliate in the Phoenix market, which is true. It's just that the full-power station, KMOH-DT, is 200 miles away, in Kingman, with a co-owned LPTV station, KEJR-LD, serving the Phoenix metro area.

Look, I know Arizona has lots of sparsely populated space, but how on Earth is a station 200 miles away from Phoenix considered to be in the Phoenix market?

Seems to me they're stretching the truth a bit :-X

Distance doesn't matter, cable carriage does. If the station is a "must-carry" in the Phoenix market, it will do just fine.

 

[newsmark]

... they have a full-power affiliate in the Phoenix market, which is true. It's just that the full-power station, KMOH-DT, is 200 miles away, in Kingman, with a co-owned LPTV station, KEJR-LD, serving the Phoenix metro area.

Look, I know Arizona has lots of sparsely populated space, but how on Earth is a station 200 miles away from Phoenix considered to be in the Phoenix market?

Seems to me they're stretching the truth a bit :-X

There's probably no TV city closer than Phoenix. The Phoenix stations probably have translators in Kingman.

 

[dhett]

Without getting into further discussion of Phx - this is a Texas TV thread, after all - suffice it to say there's no stretching the truth; the Phoenix market includes all of northern AZ up to the Utah border, except for the far northeastern part of the state, so stations in Kingman, Prescott and Flagstaff are in the Phoenix market, and Phoenix stations have translators in those cities.

There's also no must carry for KMOH in Phoenix on Cox; however the satellite services do carry them.

Back to the topic at hand, given what MundoFox is doing in AZ, there's no telling what they're gonna do in Texas. Until they announce affiliates, any speculation is plausible, as they don't seem too picky at this time. That may prove to be a wise choice for MundoFox, giving them as much flexibility as possible. I know this: Texas markets will be very, very desirable for MundoFox.

 

[JHBrandt]

... they have a full-power affiliate in the Phoenix market, which is true. It's just that the full-power station, KMOH-DT, is 200 miles away, in Kingman, with a co-owned LPTV station, KEJR-LD, serving the Phoenix metro area.

Look, I know Arizona has lots of sparsely populated space, but how on Earth is a station 200 miles away from Phoenix considered to be in the Phoenix market?

Seems to me they're stretching the truth a bit :-X

Distance doesn't matter, cable carriage does. If the station is a "must-carry" in the Phoenix market, it will do just fine.

That was my question though. How the heck does a station become must-carry for cable in a market that's 200 miles from its OTA transmitter? Bribery?

 

[Kent]

That was my question though. How the heck does a station become must-carry for cable in a market that's 200 miles from its OTA transmitter? Bribery?

I know the Eagle Pass or Del Rio station (can't remember the calls, but it seems like KTRG or KVAW) tried to get must-carry on cable in San Antonio, but the FCC ruled it wasn't entitled to it because its signal wasn't receivable at the head end. I don't know if it would be entitled to must-carry if it paid for the equipment to get the signal to the head end or not, but it does seem like securing cable coverage for a distant station would be difficult.

 

[fredcantu]

I know the Eagle Pass or Del Rio station (can't remember the calls, but it seems like KTRG or KVAW) tried to get must-carry on cable in San Antonio, but the FCC ruled it wasn't entitled to it because its signal wasn't receivable at the head end.

KYVV Del Rio has an application to move its tower halfway to San Antonio and another application for an on-channel translator near Pipe Creek that appears to put a signal over half of San Antonio, perhaps the cable head end.

 

[fybush]

That was my question though. How the heck does a station become must-carry for cable in a market that's 200 miles from its OTA transmitter? Bribery?

Default.

Unlike the east, where there's a city every 50 or 75 miles big enough to support a full complement of TV stations and thus become its own market, you go 200 miles out from Phoenix in every direction except southeast and you get...not much.

In 1960, the population of Mohave County was barely 8,000. You can't sustain a TV station in a "market" that size, so if people wanted TV in a place like Kingman back then, they erected microwave links and translators to bring in stations from the nearest TV city, and that was Phoenix. (And sure enough, the 1961-62 Broadcasting Yearbook shows Kingman translators on 70, 76 and 82, relaying KVAR, KTVK and KOOL-TV from Phoenix.)

The viewing patterns established back then eventually determined where the lines were drawn for Arbitron's Areas of Dominant Influence (ADI) - and those ADIs eventually determined must-carry for cable. Every county is part of a market, and if Mohave County doesn't go with Phoenix, where does it go? (The same was true in other huge western states with spread-out populations - all of Utah is in the Salt Lake City ADI, nearly all of New Mexico is in the Albuquerque ADI, and all of Nevada is divided between just two markets, Reno and Las Vegas.)

What nobody could have expected back then was that Phoenix would grow so much that it would actually be lucrative eventually to build a station in Kingman (Mohave County's population has exploded from 8,000 in 1960 to 200,000 today), or that the rules could someday be used to try to leverage that Kingman station on cable in Phoenix. Call it the law of unintended consequences...

 

[arnoldevns]

Trying to veer this back to the market at hand...
Looking at rabbitears.info for the DFW market.. let's set aside for the moment the idea that KDFW would put this on a subchannel.
Fox seems to be going a different route in the other markets they have announced.

There are a number of LPTV stations that have great signals over most of the most-populous areas of this market.
While many of them have programming that wouldn't seem likely to move, some seem to have "placeholder" programming that is repeated on other subchannels. The one that caught my eye with a high likelyhood for such programming is KODF-LD channel 26.
26.1 is currently simulcasting HOT-TV which was first introduced on 31.3 (and is co-owned with 31.4's RTV station) HOT-TV is also airing on KATA-LD 50.4. Several years ago when KODF signed on the air, they offered spanish language Mega TV on 26.1. In fact, it was a full HD feed. Without a bunch of other subchannels on KODF, I could easily see MundoFox taking over 26.1 and getting a pretty good coverage of the market with it. One would also think Fox would have some leverage to get it on cable too.

 

[fredcantu]

In a press release dated May 22, MundoFox says, "To date, MundoFox has lined up Full Power stations in six of the top 10 U.S. Hispanic markets (Los Angeles # 1, Dallas #6, San Antonio #7, San Francisco #8, Phoenix #9 and Harlingen/McAllen #10.)

They say "full power" but not whether it's a digital subchannel of a full power station.
I wonder why they won't reveal the affiliates yet. It's already June and they're launching "Summer 2012."

 

[JHBrandt]

Default.

Unlike the east, where there's a city every 50 or 75 miles big enough to support a full complement of TV stations and thus become its own market, you go 200 miles out from Phoenix in every direction except southeast and you get...not much.

In 1960, the population of Mohave County was barely 8,000. You can't sustain a TV station in a "market" that size, so if people wanted TV in a place like Kingman back then, they erected microwave links and translators to bring in stations from the nearest TV city, and that was Phoenix. (And sure enough, the 1961-62 Broadcasting Yearbook shows Kingman translators on 70, 76 and 82, relaying KVAR, KTVK and KOOL-TV from Phoenix.)

The viewing patterns established back then eventually determined where the lines were drawn for Arbitron's Areas of Dominant Influence (ADI) - and those ADIs eventually determined must-carry for cable. Every county is part of a market, and if Mohave County doesn't go with Phoenix, where does it go? (The same was true in other huge western states with spread-out populations - all of Utah is in the Salt Lake City ADI, nearly all of New Mexico is in the Albuquerque ADI, and all of Nevada is divided between just two markets, Reno and Las Vegas.)

What nobody could have expected back then was that Phoenix would grow so much that it would actually be lucrative eventually to build a station in Kingman (Mohave County's population has exploded from 8,000 in 1960 to 200,000 today), or that the rules could someday be used to try to leverage that Kingman station on cable in Phoenix. Call it the law of unintended consequences...

That's a really good explanation - not to mention interesting reading! Thanks.

 

[JHBrandt]

One would also think Fox would have some leverage to get it on cable too.

I've read that Fox has an "all or nothing" rule for cable providers - if you want to provide any Fox programming, you have to provide all the Fox programming available for the market. So if Fox wanted to go with KODF, I'm pretty sure they could get it on cable, even w/o must-carry.

Besides, KODF used to be on most cable & satellite systems. It used to be DFW's Azteca affiliate, then our Mega TV affiliate, and only got dropped from cable/satellite after that went away; so it'd probably be easy to add back.