TV Guide: Areas in Which More Than One Edition Was Sold?

[KML0224]

Probably why WMTW used to get a listing in the Vermont Edition. They were the only Maine station carried in that one as a result of their tower location!

 

[Stanislav]

Probably why WMTW used to get a listing in the Vermont Edition. They were the only Maine station carried in that one as a result of their tower location!

And yet even though for many years WMTW was the de facto ABC affiliate for much of Vermont (before WVNY-22 signed on), where my grandparents were in the Champlain Valley, we couldn't see them at all except once in a while when conditions were right. The ancient conical antenna they had (which looked like it probably had negative gain on hi-band VHF) certainly didn't help, but even our friends in town with better setups could barely pull it in -- they all usually watched WAST-13 out of Albany for their ABC. (This is also why until WVNY came along, WPTZ in Plattsburgh carried a handful of ABC shows on a secondary basis.)

A lot of your success or lack thereof with WMTW had to do with just where you were in relation to the Green Mountains range. Years later, on a trip up that way, I did an experiment with a Watchman in my car. Driving across the state on Rte. 17, it certainly helped reception when you started to get some elevation (for example, it was much more viewable in Bristol, which was probably about 1000' higher up than where my grandparents' place was), but Lincoln Gap seemed to be the dividing line -- west of there, the signal was choppy and sporadic -- as soon as you passed that point and were on the other side of the divide, WMTW was rock solid.

 

[rwells2265]

Question for Russell: Have you ever had an
opportunity to look for TV Guide in Heflin, AL?
I'm curious as to whether you could buy both
the Atlanta and Northern Alabama Editions there.

I never had a chance, but for years I too wondered about areas like Heflin and Wedowee.

Ditto for Chilton and Coosa counties between Birmingham and Montgomery. Both sets of stations are on the cable in those areas, yet the North Alabama and South Alabama editions didn't overlap channels.

--Russell

 

[MikeyBos]

The Portland area channels can all be received from Portsmouth further north in eastern NH as well. Also, isn't part of northern NH in the Portland DMA? We used to vacation every summer when I was a kid, about 20 miles north of Rochester and the only over-the-air stations we could receive at the cottage were from the Portland area pretty much.

In any case, to answer your question, whereas chs. 6, 8 and 26 were viewable all day long with normal rabbit ears, ch. 13 would normally be viewable at night and early in the morning, only occasionally during the middle of the day. The same could be said for chs. 10 (WJAR) and 12 (WPRI) from Providence, although they were a bit stronger than ch. 13. But for instance, for NBC daytime programs pre-empted on ch. 4 in Boston, you could easily turn over to ch. 6 from Portland to catch them.

At one point in the late 80s, here's what could be received easily regularly over the air all day long (at least 2 of each of the big 3):

2 WGBH (PBS) Boston
4 WBZ (NBC) Boston
5 WCVB (ABC) Boston
6 WCSH (NBC) Portland, ME
7 WNEV (CBS) Boston
8 WMTW (ABC) Poland Spring, ME
9 WMUR (ABC) Manchester, NH
11 WENH (PBS) Durham, NH
21 WNHT (CBS) Concord, NH
25 WFXT (Fox) Boston
26 WMEA (PBS) Biddeford, ME
27 WHLL (Ind.) Worcester
38 WSBK (Ind.) Boston
44 WGBX (PBS) Boston
50 WNDS (Ind.) Derry, NH
56 WLVI (Ind.) Boston
60 WGOT (Ind.) Merrimack, NH
66 WHSH (HSN) Marlborough
68 WQTV (Ind.) Boston

There was no lack of over-the-air programming available back then in Amesbury!

MikeyBos, the New Hampshire Edition carried 6, 8, 13, 26, 35 and 51 from Maine because it was sold in York County, Maine. I, myself, lived in Old Orchard Beach back from 1985 to 1987. I never did see any store there sell both the New Hampshire and Maine Editions together. O.O.B. sold the New Hampshire Edition while Scarborough, next door and over the Cumberland County line, sold the Maine Edition.

As for your reception report, did you ever get WGME-TV (CBS) channel 13 from Portland? Back then, your chances of getting WMTW-TV (ABC) channel 8 of Poland Spring, ME would have been better, since their transmitter was on Mount Washington at the time.

 

[compubit]

In Oneonta, New York, the CVS store carried 3 editions:

Albany
Syracuse (including Utica)
Pennsylvania-New York State (Binghamton)

Grocery stores had at least 2 of them, all stamped across the TV Guide Logo...

Which one you needed depended on which direction you pointed your antenna (and how high up you were). My aunt lives near the top of a mountain, and can pick up stations from all around (although Albany doesn't come in too well and WKTV/2's signal kills WSTM/3 - they're essentially all lined up...).

I've seen a couple of markets where a cable-specific and regional edition were side-by-side (LA area - former MediaOne editions...).

I didn't even take into account the famous (or infamous) TV Guide Ultimate Cable large format (sitting beside the standard sized one...).

BTW - I wasn't aware of 2 different DFW editions. I only ran across one when I would travel through there (even in Fort Worth, the edition had the "Comcast" sticker on it toward the end...).

Also, in some areas, TV Guide had an "alternate" edition you could subscribe to - I lived in Galveston county; Houston was my home edition, but I subscribed to Southeast Texas. It was interesting calling to switch - they mailed me a copy of the channel lineup, just to make sure it was what I wanted... (Plus you could subscribe to the "Satellite - DirecTV" edition as a third option...)

 

[KML0224]

3 editions in Oneonta? WOW! When I made my two visits to Cooperstown, NY in 1995 and 1996 (for the Baseball Hall Of Fame), the store I went to nearby only sold the Syracuse Edition. I remember walking in there the first time. The lady behind the counter was watching channel 2 out of Utica.

 

[firepoint525]

Hey, Stanislav, this doesn't really answer your question, but back when I lived in Union City, it seems like we got the Paducah-Evansville edition of TV Guide there. Which didn't really make sense because Evansville is about 100+ miles northeast of Paducah, which is itself about an hour north of Union City! So, needless to say, we did not get any Evansville TV stations! I believe Cape Girardeau was included in the Paducah-Evansville edition, as well as probably Harrisburg, IL, too. Harrisburg is/was the ABC affiliate for that area, but we in Tennessee were too far south for that one, so we got our ABC from Jackson, TN. As I said earlier, we were too far north for the Memphis edition, too (it was not sold in U.C., as best as I can remember). I believe the Memphis edition included Jonesboro, Ark., and stations in Mississippi, too. Jackson, TN, was probably covered by Memphis, too.

So we were in a market (northwest Tennessee) not in which we were covered by two different TV Guide editions, but rather, a market in which NO edition of TV Guide was exactly suitable for us! We probably would have done better with the TV listings out of the local newspapers!

 

[anotherguyTN]

The Memphis edition had Memphis, Jackson, and Lexington, TN, Jonesboro, AR, and Tupelo, Columbus, Greenwood, Greenville, and West Point, MS. In Dyersburg I could get most of Memphis and Jackson, and Channel 8 in Jonesboro, and we were on the outer edge of the signals channel 6 in Paducah and channel 12 in Cape Griardeau. The MS stations were too far South to come in, so their listings really didn't make sense for us either.

I think that most of the editions that had a major city as their primary area would list other stations within probably 100 or so miles of the main city. However with the Paducah/Evansville edition the stations covered were spread out a lot more because of having to cover what wasn't covered in the editions for Memphis, Nashville, or St. Louis.