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Stations off air overnight

S

STF

I woke up last night/early this morning and several stations seemed to be signed-off. Fox News Channel and MTV were two of them for example and I don't recall seeing these stations do this before. I wondered if anyone knew anything about that. I looked at my Dish Network guide for next Sunday night/Monday morning and both channels have shows running.

I just found it curious and thought the posters of RI.com might be able to help.
 
Some kind of satllite maintenance? Lots of 50kw radio stations go off montholy or quarterly, maybe its someting like that,

Why not call them and find out?
 
Sometimes, I might come across even premium channels like Starz and even HBO signing off one of their channels for transponder maintenance or what have you...
 
Yes, the only reason for a national cable channel to be off would be for maintenance.

However, there are still many, many smaller market local stations that sign-off overnight. Which is somewhat surprising to me since most can operate automated with few problems. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? They go off the air...essentially the same as signing off. What am I missing here?
 
Stop what?
Drop what?
Roll what?
This is sooooo confusing! How did Bruce Willis and that elf girl from LOTR handle Armageddon so well?????? ;)
 
Seriously, I also think that many of the channels that left the air was due them being on AMC-11, the satellite whose signals will be affected by the rogue Galaxy 15 satellite, as it drifts closer to AMC-11. As a temporary measure, these channels are being relocated to other satellites, as both satellites broadcast on the same frequencies.
 
This was suppose to be around the time period that Galaxy 15 was to affect AMC-11, so I have to agree with "azumanga" it was more than likely Galaxy 15 messing up the channel's satellite feed.

Nothing to panic about...
 
searadiofreak said:
Yes, the only reason for a national cable channel to be off would be for maintenance.

However, there are still many, many smaller market local stations that sign-off overnight. Which is somewhat surprising to me since most can operate automated with few problems. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? They go off the air...essentially the same as signing off. What am I missing here?
Click to expand...

So far as I know, WKDH-45-ABC and WLOV-27-FOX in the Tupelo/Columbus market go "off air" overnight...except they aren't really "off the air" in the traditional sense of powering down their transmitters, etc. They broadcast weather graphics from WTVA-9 (which controls/programs them) that alternate between a radar scan, satellite scan and several forecast pages. Why WKDH doesn't just carry "World News Now" is beyond me.
 
I'm surprised in this day and age there are still a handful of TV stations that go off the air during the night. However, it seems to me a lot of them nowadays are PBS stations, which would make sense since they can't fill overnight slots with infomercials to make some money. Still, I've read about commercial stations on this board that go off the air overnight, especially in small markets.
 
WFMZ-TV in Allentown, PA (a pretty good indie in the Philadelphia DMA) also simulcasts its own weather scan channel upon signoff.
 
Definitely a case of the satellite problems lately; I've been having major problems during the overnights with MLB Network and ESPNews staying on for the last week so hopefully they get it fixed soon.

I think signing-off is becoming rarer and rarer too because many stations are beginning to realize it's just better to keep the transmitter on digitally than do the shut-down/reboot process analog did without a problem. In my area WBAY in Green Bay used to sign off on the weekends until January when they realized that shutting it down was causing major problems with it. Now they just air their weather station where off-the-air time used to be to keep it running.
 
searadiofreak said:
Yes, the only reason for a national cable channel to be off would be for maintenance.
Click to expand...

When I worked at TNN, we had backup TWT amplifiers, exciters, upconverters and dishes. We didn't go off the air except just long enough to switch to the back up.
 
Kind of a coincidence that stations affected by the Galaxy 15 are signing off.
 
Bengalsfan said:
When I worked at TNN, we had backup TWT amplifiers, exciters, upconverters and dishes. We didn't go off the air except just long enough to switch to the back up.
Click to expand...

Technically, didn't you go off the air every night between 3-9 AM?
 
The ABC I work for in Great Falls airs "World News Now" during the week, basically airing it twice through to 4:30am when we air "America This Morning" until 6am and again at 6:30. AgDay airs at 6AM. On our Fox subchannel, Jewelry TV buys airtime overnight. We air relatively few infomercials.

What's interesting is we list 'off the air' for Saturday/Sunday overnights in the grids, but I don't know that we actually power down the transmitter because apparently we still air Jewelry Television on the Fox feed.
 
I remember 20 years ago KBHK-TV now KBCW 44 in the Bay Area and KQED (PBS) in The Bay Area used to go off air every night until 2000 when both KBHK and KQED stayed on the air for 24 hours.
 
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