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New Orleans, Mobile TV on coast cable systems

T

the golden boy

Given that the MS Gulf Coast is situated between two fairly sized markets, how much penetration do both markets' TV stations get on the coast? My hunch is that Hancock County would get the New Orleans stations, while Jackson County would get Mobile. But what about Harrison County? Also, do any of the two Hattiesburg stations show up on the coast?
 
No, because the Hattiesburg stations towers are near Laurel area, the signals are to weak to pickup on the coast. So Harrison County still use New Orleans and Mobile stations instead. Plus on Directv and Dishnetwork use New Orleans and Biloxi for locals (WWL-4, WDSU-6, WLOX 13, WMAH-19, WXXV-25, AND WNOL-38.
 
I recently traveled to Carrier (Just north of Pucayune) to put up an antenna at a relatives house. The wanted to go with free OTA reception. Excellent reception of Nola stations. Same for the Biloxi signals if pointed there. While pointed at Nola MPB will not lock. WLOX 13 also has there audio mapped weird so when you tune to 13 there is no audio until you go into the menu select a different audio track (spanish I think). 13 did come in well enough to lock while pointed at NOLA. Fox did not. We went with NOLA due to getting all networks. Also the PBS channel is better than MPB. The get Qubo for the kids also. As stated no reception at Carrier from Hattiesburg. Mobile is also to far away.

Edited because I typed this from my phone which doesnt always go well.
 
Because WDAM tower is near Laurel thats about 95 miles north of the beach and the signal is smaller than NOLA & Mobile signals WHLT tower is located just north of Hattiesburg and its signal is smaller as well. Thats why cable companies here on the coast choose NOLA and Mobile stations instead.
 
the golden boy said:
jboyd said:
This post on the radio board?
Click to expand...

There's no Mississippi TV board.
Click to expand...

Good point. Would any of you know of a better place to post questions like this one? I used to post some similar questions on AVS forums (they have a board for each TV DMA), but I haven't been able to log in there for about a year now. I know some of you still post there, like that "bot" Tom Servo.
 
poledo said:
the golden boy said:
jboyd said:
This post on the radio board?
Click to expand...

There's no Mississippi TV board.
Click to expand...

Good point. Would any of you know of a better place to post questions like this one? I used to post some similar questions on AVS forums (they have a board for each TV DMA), but I haven't been able to log in there for about a year now. I know some of you still post there, like that "bot" Tom Servo.
Click to expand...

To me, this is more of an engineering question than a "TV" question, so I have no issue with it being here. One other thing, isn't there a ridge near Wiggins, running east and west, that blocks the signal coming from Hattiesburg? When I was at WQID, we were supposed to get EBS (now EAS) signals from one of the Hattiesburg stations, but we couldn't pick up the signal. The engineer bought an FM antenna and started climbing the STL tower behind the station. He connected coax to the antenna, and hooked it up to the FM tuner, set to the frequency of the Hattiesburg station. He and I used walkie talkies to communicate, and eventually he made it high enough that we could get a reliable signal from the station. He was at least 80 feet up, if I remember correctly...
 
I was in Biloxi over the weekend and this is what I saw in my hotel room:

Fox: WXXV Gulfport, WALA Mobile
ABC: WLOX Biloxi, WGNO New Orleans
NBC: WDSU New Orleans
CBS: WKRG Mobile
PBS: WMAH Biloxi, WYES New Orleans

Wasn't WALA an NBC affiliate? I see Mel Showers is still at it at WKRG. I remember watching him when KRG was carried on what was then Pine Belt Cable in Hattiesburg in the mid-90s.
 
Odd that WWL-4 is missing from that lineup when WDSU is included. What you saw may or may not be the local cable system: it could be a Dish Network SMATV that serves only that facility. Many multi-dwelling units (MDUs) have switched to those on-site facilities. I've helped my former partner put in many of them in the Gulf Shores area.

WALA went from NBC to Fox in 1996 due to an ownership change. Simultaneously WPMI 15 gave up Fox and took NBC.

Mel Showers has been at WKRG for practically his entire adult working career, and as Billy Joel said, "and he probably will be for life."
 
the golden boy said:
I was in Biloxi over the weekend and this is what I saw in my hotel room:

Fox: WXXV Gulfport, WALA Mobile
ABC: WLOX Biloxi, WGNO New Orleans
NBC: WDSU New Orleans
CBS: WKRG Mobile, WWL-TV New Orleans
PBS: WMAH Biloxi, WYES New Orleans

Wasn't WALA an NBC affiliate? I see Mel Showers is still at it at WKRG. I remember watching him when KRG was carried on what was then Pine Belt Cable in Hattiesburg in the mid-90s.
Click to expand...
 
I don't know what the N.O. TV ratings are like now, but in the past WWL was typically by far #1 in total day, and during news periods it was known to have the audience greater than the other 3 (DSU VUE GNO) combined. A cable lineup anywhere in the DMA could not leave out WWL, even tho the other CBS affiliate WKRG was also in demand.
 
By the way about WKRG, DIRECTV and Dish Network only have WWL 4 as CBS station on their channel lineup, but other guys like Cable One have both CBS stations WWL and WKRG on their lineup

DIRECTV and Dish Network in Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula Local TV Market (Harrison, Jackson, Stone County)

WWL TV 4 CBS NOLA
WDSU 6 NBC NOLA
WLOX 13 ABC Biloxi
WMAH 19 PBS Biloxi
WXXV 25 FOX Gulfport
WNOL 38 CW NOLA

Cable One in Long Beach, Gulfport, and Saucier area

3. WLOX 13 ABC Biloxi
4. WWL 4 CBS NOLA
5. WKRG 5 CBS Mobile
6. WDSU 6 NBC NOLA
7. WBGP 7 CW Long Beach (local cable channel)
8. WVUE 8 FOX NOLA
9. WGNO 26 ABC NOLA
10. WXXV 25 FOX Gulfport
11. WMAH 19 PBS Biloxi
12. WYES 12 PBS NOLA
13. Coast TV Long Beach (local cable channel)
18. WXXV-DT2 My XXV 2 My Network TV Gulfport
61. WLOX-DT2 24/7 Weather Channel Biloxi
Digital TV
456. WLOX-DT3 This TV Biloxi
 
My understanding is that DirecTV and Dish have different rules about what locals they can carry in a given market, restrictions that cable does not have. When I lived in rural Mississippi, for example, the Grenada Cable One system carried NBC from Tupelo, ABC, PBS, FOX and CBS from Greenville-Greenwood, and WLBT from Jackson. And before the digital switchover, they also carried WMC-TV from Memphis instead of WLBT. (For the brief period after the switchover, RF analog cable channel 3 was actually picking up the analog night light service from KTBS in Shreveport, which was kinda cool.)

DirecTV and Dish didn't carry ANY locals in the market at all, and would have been restricted to ONLY those stations in the Greenwood-Greenville-Lake Village, AR market, CBS, PBS and ABC. And maybe the Fox 6.2 subchannel. For some reason, none of the Memphis or Tupelo or Jackson stations qualified as significantly viewed distants for satellite even though cable carried them. (Now that I'm no longer a DirecTV sub, sadly, I can say publicly that the installers in that area always lied to D* so people could get Memphis, Jackson or Columbus locals. I moved my service from B'ham and they never changed my service address, so for my four years in MS I got HD locals from Birmingham!)

I don't know what the situation is now there since WABG put on an NBC affiliate as a lptv station finally.

As for coastal cable systems, I wonder how much reception issues affect what they can carry? I seem to recall WDSU and WWL being easy catches in Biloxi in the analog days with an outdoor antenna, and WKRG was probably easy, too. WKRG is the westernmost commercial full power Mobile-Pensacola station, location-wise, and they also have a massive tall tower that can "see" a lot of Mobile County. WALA's tower is shorter and offset to the east more from Mobile, WEIQ is closest but so short it's too weak to be anything more than a very local signal and the rest broadcast from central Baldwin County and probably don't reach much past Pascagoula. WEIQ and WALA are actually not reliable enough to watch OTA where I live in Foley, which is only about 20 air miles out.
 
radiorock89xfm said:
Because WDAM tower is near Laurel thats about 95 miles north of the beach and the signal is smaller than NOLA & Mobile signals WHLT tower is located just north of Hattiesburg and its signal is smaller as well. Thats why cable companies here on the coast choose NOLA and Mobile stations instead.
Click to expand...

I just ran a TV Fool signal analysis for Cable One's Biloxi location. I'm guessing that this is where their headend is.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d9e7444ad39c100

I used 100 feet as the antenna height. That's just a guess, but it may be too low for a headend.

WHLT's signal came in at a noise margin (dB) of -0.6 at 72.4 miles, whereas WWL's came in at 5.6 at 76.8 miles.
WDAM is -4.5 at 76.4 miles, whereas WDSU is -3.6 at 71.1 miles. I think that WDAM would have a reliable signal on the coast if the station had more HAAT. It's current HAAT is ridiculously low.
 
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