Youngstown, CW HD, El Paso and A Little Cincinnati
> What this tells us, along with the announcements that CW
> will be on DTV subchannels in El Paso (KVIA-DT) and
> Youngstown ("WBCB," on WFMJ-DT), is that the CW is certainly
> willing to bend on the HD carriage requirement. "WRWB"
> already puts the WB HD feed on Time Warner's digital HD
> tier, and presumably similar deals for cable HD will be
> struck in El Paso and Youngstown.
And it'll be easy over in Y-Town, as Time Warner is the dominant cable provider in the Mahoning Valley. The other big provider, Armstrong (suburban Boardman) has been quite cooperative with new stations...it was the first to run "WBCB" in the first place, and will also be running a FOX HD feed from LPTV combo WYFX/WFXI "FOX 17/62". (That little piece of news, along with the first word of WBCB moving to CW, was first seen in a certain blog.

)
The WBCB announcement is not surprising, either, as there is no in-market UPN affiliate in Youngstown. WUAB/43 Cleveland gets carriage there.
As far as the reverse compensation goes, I wouldn't be surprised to see CW sign up Big Four network affiliates in some of those markets to create a new CW cable channel, what they're apparently doing in El Paso (KVIA, as far as I can tell, does not run such a channel currently).
It could be a way they sneak around one Elliott Block and his WBQC-CA in Cincinnati, with no other full power alternative available. Note our item from the other day, noting that CW basically has ignored Mr. Block up to now...not even returning his calls. There's LOTS of history there with WBQC and Time Warner, and nearly none of it is good.
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