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Worst Stations and Markets for Local TV

K.M. Richards said:
And that has now led to a spinoff site called "The History of UHF Television" which went live this afternoon:

http://www.uhftelevision.com
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Congratulations K.M. on "going live coast to coast" with the site.

There is some fabulous material there! May you get thousands and thousands of page views!
 
HawkeyeST said:
When the Live Well Network ends in January 2015, it will be replaced by Antenna TV on KCRG 9.3, which begs the question: What will become of KWKB 20.2?
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A better question would be: What will become of KWKB? Could it lose its CW affiliation as well? Its signal doesn't reach Waterloo, but it does cover the Quad Cities!
http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=1174463&map=Y

And here's their schedule. The 6pm and 10pm slots are marked "To Be Announced".
tvschedule.zap2it.com/tvlistings/ZCSGrid.do?stnNum=20766&channel=10&aid=tvschedule

Also, look at their owners - KM Communications. They owned a good number of stations - including some full-powers - before they got sold or left the air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KM_Communications_Inc.

Sounds like another candidate for "cursed" station...

(Crossposted from "Antenna TV moving in eastern Iowa" thread)
 
Worst TV Station ever

I nominate WNKY Bowling Green KY as the worst tv station ever. WNKY's local newscasts look like something you would expect from middle school students and are very painful to watch.They have a revolving door and weather forecasters and news anchors. They station obviously have trouble selling commercial slots too, you can tell this by their mascot "Radar the Weather Dog" walking through various parts of their viewing area in commercial slots. The carry NBC and CBS on a SD sub channel. Some of the local cable companies in the market have started droppping WNKY and replacing it with the Nashville affiliates after they asked for a 1200% increase and cable carriage costs. Station is owned by MAXX Media

Can anyone top these guys?
 
There's no news except for a half-hour morning broadcast. Nope, nothing at 5PM, 6PM or 10PM except for little weather briefs. This is why WBKO owns the market!
They were the old WKNT (Fox) and then WQQB (Ind). WQQB was TERRIBLE, extremely cursed. Programs would appear skipping and sticking with sometimes no audio at all. Hardly anyone in Bowling Green knew of channel 40's existence early on. After getting Fox they were a little bit better, but still no news. WNKY became an NBC station in 2001 without news at all, either.
Just last year WNKY and the CBS subchannel were fined $39,000 for airing a local commercial for a sports apparel store in Bowling Green that included EAS tones. They were also expected to launch an Emergency Alert System campaign after paying the $39,000 fine.

-crainbebo
 
WKRN in Nashville TN has been cursed from the day they signed on the air in the 50's till now. There was never a strong news department, the owners changer mangers and anchor men to often, and they did not clear alot of the ABC programing.
 
mvcg66b3r said:
WHTX was itself a cursed station. From Wikipedia:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WUVN#WUVN-DT2

http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getimportletter_exh.cgi?import_letter_id=11325
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Update on WHTX from Wikipedia:

After finding that there was insufficient evidence to prove that WHTX-LP had in fact failed to operate for twelve consecutive months, the FCC again reinstated the station's license on November 3, 2014 and directed Entravision to file a new displacement application; on November 7, it filed to construct a digital companion channel for WHTX, again specifying operation on channel 43 in Springfield.
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http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws...200&Service=LD&Form_id=346&Facility_id=198388

Maybe WHTX just might have a chance after all.
 
From RadioInsight: "Why is WMAR so bad???"

ksradiogeek:

I’m surprised that, given their roots with the Sun and with the many names of talent that have passed through over the years (Marsden, Stovall, Thorner, etc.), WMAR is just…terrible in the ratings. But why, though? Usually Scripps stations do very well.
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Steve:

WMAR TV2 has several things working against it:

It is at the bottom of the dial. Baltimore 11 and 13 are next to each other. If someone has an antenna in the area they probably get 2, 4 (DC), 5 (DC), 7 (DC), 8 (WGAL), 9 (DC), 11, 13, and then stations who’s virtual channel numbers are in the UHF range. Flipping channels to get to WMAR someone has to go down through the DC stations to get there. (That is less of a problem on cable, Comcast put 2 on channel 12 between 11 and 13).

Being an ABC affiliate is not helping.

Their news is not great. If I need news I go to 13, WJZ. Most people I know watch news on 13 or 11.

The Baltimore market is also shoved in between the Philly market, the York/Lancaster/Harrisburg market, and the DC market. So there are less viewers than there could be. It doesn’t help that ABC 7 out of DC has news that is more relevant to a fairly good sized portion of residents of the Baltimore market who work for the federal government or in DC. In my opinion, ABC 7’s news is much better than WMAR’s.
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http://radioinsight.com/community/topic/why-is-wmar-so-bad/

Folks, do you think WMAR is cursed? Also, what are the weakest affiliates of each Big 4 network?
 
eugene1 said:
I nominate WNKY Bowling Green KY as the worst tv station ever. WNKY's local newscasts look like something you would expect from middle school students and are very painful to watch.They have a revolving door and weather forecasters and news anchors. They station obviously have trouble selling commercial slots too, you can tell this by their mascot "Radar the Weather Dog" walking through various parts of their viewing area in commercial slots. The carry NBC and CBS on a SD sub channel. Some of the local cable companies in the market have started droppping WNKY and replacing it with the Nashville affiliates after they asked for a 1200% increase and cable carriage costs. Station is owned by MAXX Media

Can anyone top these guys?
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Beats me. I've never watched TV in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I don't know how anyone could possibly know much about television stations outside the markets they've lived in, or at least spent a lot of time in. Face it, most TV stations are mostly just the same network feeds or the same batch of syndicated reruns.
 
Avid Listener said:
Is that what that thread is about? I thought it was about stations that were possessed by demons or otherwise damned. I never realized it was simply about bad stations.
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No, it's a nightly list of three stations given by Keith Olbermann.
 
Not even going to worry about the comments below the first, but if a cable system in your home market is dropping your own market's station for Nashville ones out of what they called a blatant cash grab to get a 1,000% increase on their retrans fees...pretty good idea your station is horrible.

The comment thread on TVSpy about it is a good idea of how terrible WNKY is. The station's Facebook is under the name of their 'weather dog' mascot, a concept which died on major market stations decades ago. Said dog apparently runs wild on the set at times and their 'news' programming is usually community calendar events extended to an absurd amount of time to satisfy the FCC and the bare minimum requirements of their NBC and CBS affiliation agreements. The worst though has to be how the station allowed one of those unlicensed sports clothing stores usually in the old Payless at the local dead mall to air an EAS tone in their ads. No station would ever allow this, but they did, and the FCC came down on them hard.

Pretty much this is a station run in only to deny their viewers in other markets access to quality stations in Louisville and Nashville for that sweet retrans cash, and it shows.
 
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From a Topix post:

WNKY's idea of news is to record stories over a week out about the latest fashion trends and senior event calendars. There is no hard news and the stations do not serve the public interest as defined by the Federal Communications Comission. I expect WNKY to go dark and shut down sometime this year.
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http://www.topix.com/forum/city/glasgow-ky/T6CO4NP1HD8IQEDPF/post1

And be sold for spectrum? Folks, this is the next WMGM.
 
I could run WNKY with more aplomb than their current staff. And I've never operated a television station or lived in Kentucky.
 
From Northpine.com:

ABC affiliate KABY/9 (Aberdeen), a satellite of KSFY/13 (Sioux Falls), has gone off the air due to unexpected tower problems. According to a notification of suspension of operations filed with the FCC, KABY went off the air Jan. 11 because its tower did not pass a recent inspection and had to be deconstructed. A notice posted on KSFY's website says, "We are assessing our options to determine when, if and how it may be possible to transmit the KABY signal in the future." The station has a long history in the area, having started in 1958 as NBC/ABC affiliate KXAB-TV before becoming a satellite of KSOO-TV, now KSFY. KABY continues to provide a feed to cable systems, while satellite TV viewers in the Aberdeen area receive KSFY.
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Here, it's satellite KABY that's cursed, NOT main station KSFY, which has a decent lineup and HD newscasts.
 
I have to say that WTLH is cursed in Tallahassee. Programming was OK, with the exception of the weekday morning newscast. There was always an odd noise on it. Now that the non-license assets have been sold to Sinclair, FOX has been moved to WTWC 40.2, while retaining the FOX 49 brand. WTLH only has ME-TV and the WTLF simulcast in SD.

I don't have much use for WTWC either. No news; they gave up back in 2000 because no one was watching. The weather cut ins seen on the Today show is done from WEAR in Pensacola.
 
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