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TBN - (Trinity Broadcasting Network) translators

E

e-dawg

I know in the analog days. TBN has bunch of translators covering coast to coast, with the conversion to digital, TBN sold or closed most of it's translator. Why did TBN sold or closed most of their translators?
 
Making the conversion to digital at each of those translators is a significant investment - easily well into the five figures and maybe into six, depending on whether antennas need to be replaced and there's tower work involved. Those costs add up quickly when you're looking at hundreds of sites that have to be converted. One can reasonably assume (without any inside knowledge, and I have none) that TBN didn't believe it could bring in enough in donations to cover those costs for whichever translators it shut down or gave away. (One can also reasonably assume, again without any inside knowledge, that TBN has a reasonably sophisticated mechanism for tracking the source of its donations, at least by zip code, to determine which translators had enough support to be worth converting, and which ones weren't going to be worth the cost.)
 
The only reason they sold a translator in Chicago (now WESV-LD) on RF 40, was because they managed to get WWTO on most cable systems in the Chicago market, though the station is too far from Chicago to get on most days with an outdoor antenna. WWTO doesn't get must carry status, due to the station being nearly 80 miles from Chicago, & gets few viewers in the far western suburbs. It's much closer to the Peoria, IL market, & really needs to be part of the Peoria market, & not Chicago. I know a translator on 22 in the Chicago suburbs won't likely be converted to digital, due to a tight squeeze with WSBT-TV South Bend & WVCY-TV Milwaukee, broadcasting on RF 22.
 
And in April TBN sold 36 of its translators to Regal Media, a broadcasting group headed by George Cooney, the CEO of the EUE/Screen Gems studios

I know our TBN translator (25 in Minneapolis0 is one of them.
 
Most of TBN's money goes to buy direct carriage on cable systems -- even where a broadcast station with must carry is airing TBN programming.
 
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