STATIONS SEEN ON THEIR CORRECT CABLE CHANNEL (EXAMPLE: CHANNEL 5 ON CHANNEL 5)

[trapper12]

In Knoxville on Comcast, WATE 6 is on 13, WVLT 8 is on 5, and WBIR 10 is on 9.(of course all of these channels are virtual now)

I do not deal with Comcast in Knoxville that much. I do know that in the outlying areas and up in Kentucky the Knoxville stations 6 8 and 10 are usually on their correct cable channel. WTNZ is usually on 12 or 13 and WMAK for those that carry it is usually on 7.

 

[nathannah]

@MRSCHIMPF: That's why I hate the branding of MY-TV 9 here in Connecticut. Go an hour and change down I-95 from New Haven and what do you have? Yes...WWOR-TV (MY) channel 9 of Secaucus, NJ/New York City.

If I remember that's because when LIN grabbed the station, they also forced the local cable systems to take WCTX in exchange for WTNH-8 during RT consent negotiations, and then forced Syndex to boot WWOR out of the market and put them on cable 9, right? Or was that just coincidental that they were on 9 beforehand?

Daystar affiliate WDPM is not carried for some reason, I guess the OTA station may be a simulcast of the cable Daystar station already on UVerse? WDPM's digital allotment is 23 and is supposed to be using PSIP 31 but they have been using PSIP 4 since they signed on... when they aren't off the air.

I would assume they're just waiting out the string on their cable-only contract for the digital religious tier, then will throw up the must-carry flag to get WDPM on local systems later.

 

[KML0224]

@MRSCHIMPF: I don't know if there was anything involving WWOR-TV. Here in New Britain, CT, WCTX-TV was added to our lineup quite a long time time after WWOR's EMI Service was ended. I'm not sure if WWOR (or WPIX) is still on any cable systems in Connecticut outside of Fairfield County (which is part of the New York City DMA).

 

[anotherguyTN]

In Jackson, TN Charter has the following cable channels that match the channels they were on before the digital conversion:

From Memphis:
WREG CBS 3
WMC NBC 5
WKNO PBS 10
WHBQ Fox 13

From Jackson:
WBBJ ABC 7
WLJT PBS 11

WBBJ was on cable channel 8 until the digital conversion when it changed to channel 7.

 

[Jazz_Kat]

Dish Network for northwest Tennesse is as follows ...

Locals
WPSD NBC 6 & 6672 (Paducah, KY)
WBBJ ABC 7 & 6670 (Jackson, TN)
WLJT PBS 11 & 6674 (Martin, Jackson, Lexington, TN)
KFVS CBS 12 & 6671 (Cape Girardeau, MO)
WJKT FOX 16 & 6673 (Jackson, TN)

Superstations
KTLA CW 233 (Los Angeles)
WPIX CW 234 (New York)
KWGN CW 235 (Denver)
WBZ My Network 236 (Boston)
WWOR My Network 238 (New Jersey)

WGN America 239 (Chicago) ***Not a superstation, part of a different package***

The locals stations match, but the superstations don't.

 

[gregg75]

On Dish and DirecTV the stations always match.....that's why we're not counting them.

I don't travel a lot, but it seems to be more in the South (for some reason or not)
that cable doesn't give stations the correct channel number.

 

[KML0224]

@ JAZZ_KAT: I think you meant WSBK-TV (MY) channel 38 of Boston. WBZ-TV is CBS channel 4. However, they are sister stations at least.

 

[Jazz_Kat]

@ JAZZ_KAT: I think you meant WSBK-TV (MY) channel 38 of Boston. WBZ-TV is CBS channel 4. However, they are sister stations at least.

You are right. My mistake.

 

[fybush]

On Dish and DirecTV the stations always match.....that's why we're not counting them.

I don't travel a lot, but it seems to be more in the South (for some reason or not)
that cable doesn't give stations the correct channel number.

I do travel a lot, and I don't think the phenomenon is limited to the south.

As others have pointed out upthread, the only real reason VHF stations were ever shifted from their RF channels in the first place was to avoid the "ingress" problems that stemmed from having powerful over-the-air transmitters close to residential areas, where the OTA signal could get into poorly-shielded cable systems and TVs and cause interference to the cable signal on the same channel.

There are certainly southern cities with transmitter locations that could cause ingress issues (Atlanta and Birmingham come to mind here) and others where the transmitters are far enough out of town to be less of an issue (Orlando, for instance). But I can think of plenty of cities in other parts of the country where ingress could be a problem as well - Rochester and Syracuse, for instance, or Boston's western suburbs, or Omaha. Out west, towers tend to be on mountaintops and ingress is usually less of an issue, but there are prominent exceptions even out there (Seattle and San Francisco come to mind.)

Here in Rochester, the suburban People's Cable system put 8, 10 and 13 on 8, 10 and 13 and battled ingress issues right up until the end of analog TV (and even now, I get some ingress issues from digital signals on 10 and 13 against analog cable 10 and 13.) The American Cable system in the city started out using modified Hamlin "slide-rule" converter boxes that did a crude form of remapping: when your pointer on the box was on "channel 8," it was really tuned to RF channel 7. So there was no "channel 2" on the system, and 8, 10 and 13 were really on RF 7, 9 and 12. The advent of cable-ready TV sets pretty much ended that scheme, and the system was eventually realigned to put 8, 10 and 13 on 8, 10 and 13.

I remember Syracuse's Newchannels system putting 3, 5 and 9 on 4, 6 and 7. Those got moved eventually, if memory serves.

In Boston, the systems near the TV towers in Newton and Needham didn't make much use of the low VHF channels at all; 2, 4, 5 and 7 ended up on 22, 24, 25 and 27 for many years.

The move to digital cable has largely eliminated ingress and channel-mapping issues. Here on my Time Warner system in Rochester, less than a mile from the Pinnacle Hill tower site, I can still punch up "8" or "10" or "13" on my digital cable box to watch the SD versions of "channel 8." But the QAM digital signal it's actually tuning in is on a completely different frequency (somewhere up on "cable channel 90" in the 700 MHz range), and even at that it wouldn't conflict with the RF channel 45 UHF digital signal that "channel 8" now uses.

(One more note here: in Canada, cable systems have long been REQUIRED to remap local VHF signals off their RF channels to avoid ingress. So Toronto's CTV affiliate, CFTO, for instance, has never been "channel 9" on cable there; it's been on cable 8 for decades.)

 

[MarcB]

@MRSCHIMPF: I don't know if there was anything involving WWOR-TV. Here in New Britain, CT, WCTX-TV was added to our lineup quite a long time time after WWOR's EMI Service was ended. I'm not sure if WWOR (or WPIX) is still on any cable systems in Connecticut outside of Fairfield County (which is part of the New York City DMA).

Probably because it's New Haven County both WPIX and WWOR (along with WNBC and WABC) are on COMCAST Waterbury/Wolcott. WPIX is on 11, WWOR is on 23, WNBC is on 5, and WABC is on 19.

And on COX Meriden (again New Haven County) WPIX is on Channel 22. (used to be on 23).

 

[bpatrick]

Time Warner Cable in Burlington, NC carries

WUNC/4 (PBS) on 4
WGHP/8 (Fox) on 8
WTVD/11 (ABC) on 11
WXII/12 (NBC) on 12

OTOH, WFMY/2 (CBS) is on Ch. 9, WXLV/45 (ABC for
the Triad; TVD is for the Triangle) is on 10; WCWG/20
(CW) is on 3, and I'm not even sure where WMYV/48 (MyNet)
and WGPX/16 (Ion) are.

If I'm correct Athens, GA still has

WSB (ABC) on Ch. 2
WAGA (Fox) on Ch. 5
WGTV (PBS) on Ch. 8
WXIA (NBC) on Ch. 11

 

[Brother]

Charter in St. Louis city has most STL-area stations on the "correct" channel:

KTVI-2 (FOX) on 2;
KMOV-4 (CBS) on 4;
KSDK-5 (NBC) on 5;
KETC-9 (PBS) on 9;
KPLR-11 (CW) on 11;
WPXS-13 (Daystar) on 13;
KNLC-24 (Ind.) on 24.

The only two that differ are KDNL-30 (ABC) on 12 and WRBU-46 (MY) on 7.

 

[ssetta]

Comcast in Boston has the lower channels on the correct channel:

WGBH-2 (PBS) on 2,
WBZ-4 (CBS) on 4,
WCVB-5 (ABC) on 5,
WHDH-7 (NBC) on 7,
WENH-11 (PBS) on 11.

All the higher channels are as follows:

WFXT-25 (Fox) on 13,
WUNI-27 (UNI) on 17,
WSBK-38 (My) on 14,
WGBX-44 (PBS) on 16,
WWDP-46 (ShopNBC) on 10,
WYDN-48 (DayStar) on 23,
WBIN-50 (Ind.) on 18,
WLVI-56 (CW) on 12,
WNEU-60 (TEL) on 19 (in some areas),
WMFP-62 (MeTV) on 20,
WUTF-66 (TF) on 21,
and WBPX-68 (ion) on 15.

Though I will point out that in the late 80s/early 90s in my town, most of the channels were on the correct channel, but I remember WGBH-2 being on channel 3, and WLVI-56 being on 26 (our cable system only had 52 channels at the time). But then in 1996, we switched to fiber-optic, and became a part of the cable system in my neighboring town, which is rather close to the towers, and the lineup looked like this:

27 - WGBH-2 (PBS)
28 - WBZ-4 (CBS)
29 - WCVB-5 (ABC)
30 - WHDH-7 (NBC)
31 - WENH-11 (PBS)
32 - WFXT-25 (Fox)
33 - WUNI-27 (UNI)
34 - WSBK-38 (formerly UPN)
35 - WGBX-44 (PBS)
36 - WMFP-62 (formerly Shop-at-home)
37 - WLVI-56 (formerly WB)
38 - WHSH-66 (now WUTF, formerly HSN)
39 - WABU-68 (now WBPX, formerly Ind.)
and 70 - WNDS-50 (now WBIN, Ind.)

About a year later, Comcast changed the lineup for most of Massachusetts, and the low channels moved to the positions they are today, but on my system, the cable-ready channel lineup differed from the lineup if you had the box. The main differences in the cable-ready lineup was:

22 - WGBH
23 - WBZ
24 - WCVB

and 58 - WHDH (moved to 25 in 2003 or so)

Also note, that for the cable ready lineup, channels 2 and 4 were not used at all, 5 was WYDN, and 7, was actually WSBE-36 (PBS) out of Providence, RI, exclusively available in Natick. It had always been a part of the cable system in Natick, and I think there was some contract with the town. It had never been part of the Newton/Needham system. It was on channel 22 if you had the box.

 

[dave73]

For Comcast systems in Lake County Indiana, the 5 stations that were on their former VHF channels were placed on the same channel for cable, & still that way today with their virtual channels:

2 WBBM-TV (CBS)

5 WMAQ-TV (NBC)

7 WLS-TV (ABC)

9 WGN-TV (CW)

11 WTTW (PBS)

Now with digital, if we go by the RF channel, WYIN (PBS), which used to be on 56 analog has always been on 17 for cable systems, & their RF channel 17 (digital) is also their cable channel placement today. Now if only they could officially use 17 for channel branding than 56 (though they mostly brand thamselves as Lakeshore Public Television).

 

[e-dawg]

Here are some additional cities in the west coast.

Spokane - Comast KREM 2, KXLY 4, KHQ 6, KSPS 7
Medford - Charter -KOBI 5, KSYS 8, KTVL 10, KDRV 12
Boise -Cable One KIAD 4, KIVI 6, KTVB 7, KNIN 9, KTRV 12, except KBOI is on Channel 8 (OTA 2)
Redding - Charter KRCR 7, KIXE 9, KHSL 12
Santa Barbara Cox- KEYT 3, KSBY 6, and KCOY 12
Las Vegas - Cox KSNV 3, KVVU 5, KLAS 8, KTVX 10, KTNV 13
Reno - Charter - KTVN 2, KRNV 4, KNPB 5, KOLO 8
Phoenix - Cox KTVK 3, KPHO 5, KAET 8, KSAZ 10, KPNX 12

 

[Bluenoser]

A bit of a stretch...but where I live (Amherst, NS), local cableco EastLink carries WCVB 5 on cable 5 (WGBH 2 is on cable 4, WBZ 4 on 32, and WHDH on 11 (local OTA CBAFT 11 airs on cable 12)).

 

[rwells2265]

Comcast in Savannah, Ga. continues to use the pre-digital slots for two of its three V affils:

WSAV 3 (NBC) ... 2
WTOC 11 (CBS) ... 6

WJCL 22 (ABC) is on 4, and WTGS 28 (Fox) is 10.

WVAN 9 (PBS) has its transmitter some 30 miles inland (Pembroke), so it's always been 9 on Comcast.

--Russell

 

[JeeperOne]

Here in Denver, all the English locals except for KTVD 20 & KDVR 31 are on their home channels on cable (All of them are on their home channels on satellite however)

KTVD 20 is on Comcast Cable 5 while KDVR 31 is on Comcast Cable 13

The Latin locals however are THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE of this however. Here, only TeleFutura affiliate KTFD 14 is on Channel 14 on cable & satellite as well as virtual OTA while LeSea's KETD 53 (Estrella) is still stuck on Comcast Cable 53 but the others are listed as follows.....

KCEC 50 (Univision) Comcast Cable 10
KDEN 25 (Telemundo) Comcast Cable 11
KZCO 27 (Azteca America) Comcast Cable 15

Pretty weird.....

Cheers ;D

Pat

 

[Sammi Brie]

Phoenix is a straight shot, with the major six stations on their correct places. Other oddities...

*KAZT-7 Prescott is on cable 13. Cable 7 is Cox-7 access. (Though, prior to about five years ago, it was TBS. TBS was 7, KUTP-45 was 16, and Cox 9 was...9. Those all moved. KUTP is now 9).
*KPPX-17 is 51. KASW-61 is 6 (though they have branded as 6 for a number of years).
*KTVW-33 is 19. KTAZ-39 is 20 (that was its Daystar positioning too). KPAZ-21 (TBN) is...21.

I believe Tucson is mostly the same way with major stations on their dial positions...at least on the Cox system. (Some parts of Tucson are Comcast, their only presence in the state.)

 

[w9wi]

For these numerous markets where every major station is on its OTA (virtual) channel... It would be interesting to know...

Were they carried on their own channels in the *analog* era?

For stations below channel 14, usually the point of *not* carrying them on their own channels was to avoid ingress interference, where the air signal interferes with the cable signal. (it's my understanding that in Canada, it's *illegal* to carry a must-carry station on its own channel, for this reason)

With digital TV, stations below channel 14 are usually no longer broadcasting OTA on the same channel they used in analog. So usually, there's no longer any technical problem with carrying a station on its own channel.

IOW, the situation changed drastically in June 2009 & I would expect far more stations to be carried on their own channels.