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Why no TV station In Fredericksburg VA?

N

nocomradio

Guest
If this is in the wrong place, mods, please move, but there isn't a TV forum for Virginia, so I put this here:

Why is there, or has there never been a television station to serve the Fredericksburg VA region? Sandwiched halfway between DC and Richmond, makes some areas, particularly west of the city a real challenge to pull in anything OTA clearly. Plus, other than a scarce few radio stations, its almost as if the area doesn't exist on the news stations unless something really big happens. Seems like it would be a great place for a local station to set up shop.
 
nocomradio said:
If this is in the wrong place, mods, please move, but there isn't a TV forum for Virginia, so I put this here:

Why is there, or has there never been a television station to serve the Fredericksburg VA region? Sandwiched halfway between DC and Richmond, makes some areas, particularly west of the city a real challenge to pull in anything OTA clearly. Plus, other than a scarce few radio stations, its almost as if the area doesn't exist on the news stations unless something really big happens. Seems like it would be a great place for a local station to set up shop.
Click to expand...

WHFV Channel 69 was on the air in Fredricksburg as an NBC affiliate in the '70s. I believe it was a partial- or total-satellite of WRC-TV Washington but not an NBC O&O. I think it only lasted a few years.
 
Hmmmmm! Is Fredericksburg a good place for TV DXers, then? :)

BTW we stopped in a motel in F'burg in Oct 2010....and somehow hurt my back...thank the Lord I got better. Driving is no fun with a bad back......

cd
 
Granted, it's been a few decades since I last passed through F'burg but it was only a truck stop then. I don't know what the population was but it would have been a very small town and likely could not have supported a TV station.
 
In recent years, Fredericksburg has really exploded in it's population (from what I've seen.) It's become a big town for people who work in NOVA and DC. Last couple times, I've been in the area, I was really surprised at how it's grown.

I will admit, I am surprised that Fredericksburg doesn't have any "local" television stations. You either have Richmond or DC.
 
TV Dx'ing might be a little garbled because of all the signals from other areas nearby hashing things up.

The 'burg isn't a little town anymore. Its a bedroom community of Washington DC. Its grown in leaps and bounds, but the infrastructure (including communications) hasn't kept pace.
 
I know someone who spent part of her childhood in Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg used to be this little historic town, part military (Ft. A.P. Hill) and mostly rural. As my friend put it, it's a little too far from D.C. and a little too far from Richmond. But her family had a roof antenna, and could get a mix of TV stations from both markets, depending on the direction of the antenna. It's still a small town, but adding subdivisions as quickly as possible for people working in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. As if you needed any reason to add miles to your nightmare D.C. commute.
 
Some of my family have lived in Fredericksburg/Stafford for the past 12 years. They moved there because it was semi-rural but close enough to DC and Richmond.

I don't know what life was like there 20-50 years ago there, but there's no need for a tv station in Fredericksburg now, because everyone spends all their time in their cars. Just get the news in the Stafford County Sun or the Free Lance-Star when you want it (online also).

It's still "a little too far from DC" for much tv news coverage, but it's apparently not "too far" for people to drive there and back every day... :)
 
Sounds a bit like Poughkeepsie, a town North of New York where my friend is moving in August- again stuck between two markets.


I guess the local cable company must be quids in :D
 
Well Fredericksbug isn't big, it only has 24,286 (2010), although the area around it is growing by leaps.

At 60 miles to Richmond and 50 miles to DC there is no reason to have a local TV station, unless some politician was there when the allocations were made in the 50s. Fredericksburg has 12,158 (US Census 1950) back then. The county of Spotsylvania has 122,397. (In Virginia, cities are not legally part of counties)

I know Virginia is mountains so it really varies to what stations you can get. I lived in Southern Maryland, after dark, I had no trouble getting Channels 6 and 12 from Richmond at night with just rabbit ears. I guess channel 8 was in Peterburg, but I could never pull that in. On the north side, I had no trouble getting channel 17 from Philadelphia.

(At first being from the Maryland side, I was thinking Frederick (County) Virginia or Frederick Maryland (over 65,000), so make sure you aren't like me, and confusing that :))
 
As you said, Fredericksburg itself isn't very big, but the areas surrounding it are pretty darn populated. If you live South or North of the city by 20 or so miles, then the Richmond or DC TV comes in OK. Go west and you pretty much lose it all. Plus small cities like Charlottesville, and Harrisonburg seem to do fine with TV stations, so I'd think that there'd be a need. All of the car dealerships alone could sure buy up some ad time, along with the host of other local businesses that are pretty specific to the area. It is a huge historic draw too and I'd see a station doing well to promote that.

Local news would be a really nice thing too. Unless something really major happens, like when the sniper was running rampant some years back, there is no local coverage of anything else, save for one or two radio stations who give a quick blurb or two of news at the top of each hour in the morning and evening drive times.
 
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