Watching Syracuse TV off air.

[therealjm12]

I was in Syracuse this weekend and actually watched TV off air. I scanned the digital box and picked up 11 stations. Seems most of them were WCNY. I watched the WSTM/WTVH similcast at 11:00. What an embarrassment. That don't even have any logos on the set. Just the a station logo on the bottom of the screen. What get's me is that the stations have separate commercials! This portion of the news is brought to you by........ The spot clusters are all totally different. What a scam that is. Also, WTVH is just repeating it self on it's sub channel. The Fox station is doing the same thing their on sub channel but without audio!? And where is the ION station? WSYR used to run some good old reruns of some classic shows on their DT-2, but that seems to have come to an end. Just reruns of Bridge Street and weather information. Too bad no one takes advantage of their sub channels. Syracuse television is just a disappointing mess.

 

[BobRoss]

I was in Syracuse this weekend and actually watched TV off air. I scanned the digital box and picked up 11 stations. Seems most of them were WCNY. I watched the WSTM/WTVH similcast at 11:00. What an embarrassment. That don't even have any logos on the set. Just the a station logo on the bottom of the screen. What get's me is that the stations have separate commercials! This portion of the news is brought to you by........ The spot clusters are all totally different. What a scam that is. Also, WTVH is just repeating it self on it's sub channel. The Fox station is doing the same thing their on sub channel but without audio!? And where is the ION station? WSYR used to run some good old reruns of some classic shows on their DT-2, but that seems to have come to an end. Just reruns of Bridge Street and weather information. Too bad no one takes advantage of their sub channels. Syracuse television is just a disappointing mess.

Yes, many of the market's DT selections are an embarrassment. WCNY is perhaps the only station making a concerted effort to offer a variety of programming on its different subchannels.

WSTM is probably in 2nd place, offering Weather Plus on 3.2 and their sister station WSTQ-LP on 3.3. WSTM usually isn't my preferred choice for news & weather, but the fact that they can keep that 3.2 subchannel dedicated to weather 24/7 is a big, big plus.

WSYR comes in 3rd. Their 9.2 subchannel was much better when it was mostly just Live Doppler 9 or news reruns. However, since they mucked it up with umpteen reruns of Bridge Street, Oprah and awful game shows, it seems like Live Doppler 9 is barely ever on. Just as well, since the recent weather graphics overhaul made the Doppler look worse, rather than better. They attempt to keep weather active by running forecasts in an L-Bar, but it looks like crap and further degrades from the programming. WSYR could do much better if they set aside one subchannel for Doppler at all times, and bring back the old look of the map... it was much clearer and more precise than the new one.

WTVH is dead last (as usual). Actually, the 5.2 signal was just added within the last week or so. Until then, there was just 5.1 HD and that's it. A post on the syracuse.com TV/Radio board from someone who claims to be an engineer at channel 8 (5+3) says they're just simulcasting the normal programming in SD for now, until they figure out what else to put on the 5.2 subchannel.

They tie with WSYT, whose HD channel has been plagued with audio problems for some time now. I'm surprised WSYT-DT 68.2 doesn't simulcast WNYS 43 and vice versa, like the way WWOR and WNYW do in NYC. If you have a duopoly, it's kind of a no-brainer to put your sister station on your .2 or .3 subchannel so even if a viewer can only tune one channel on their antenna, they can still view both stations.

Back to WSYR 9.2 briefly - the old movies were supplied as part of a network called "VTV" which was operated by Clear Channel as a "filler" for DTV subchannels at CC television stations across the country. As much as people criticize CC for being lame and cheap, at least they get credit for trying to offer people a reason to get on board with DTV, and even with HD Radio. Since CC sold their TV division to Newport Television in 2008, the new owners have ended the VTV network, leaving local stations to fill their subchannels with other content - hence the endless reruns of Bridge Street, etc.

 

[tripinva]

The only reason WSYT has a 68-2 at all is because it turned out that running that subchannel fixed a drop-out problem on DirecTV with regard to the primary feed. Nobody I've spoken with has any idea why it worked, but it did.

- Trip