WSTM and WSYT off Kingston Ontario Cable..

[jiminCT]

This may be one of the first of many casulties caused by the limited range of the HDTV UHF signals. Cogeco Cable in Kingston Ontario removed WSTM and WSYT from Syracuse, replaced by WGRZ and WUTV (comes in via fiber) out of Buffalo.

 

[BobRoss]

Interesting... I wonder if the Syracuse stations were given the chance to run their own fiber to stay on the lineup.

They probably would have declined anyway, with Barrington (WSTM's owner) being in very bad financial shape right now, and Sinclair (WSYT's owner) being generally cheap to begin with. Probably not worth the cost anyway... both corporate owners probably figure they have little or nothing to gain or lose in the Kingston audience since they have no impact on ratings or sales rates.

Still, it's not like the Kingston market does anything to benefit the Buffalo stations either... and Buffalo's even farther away. Did the two Buffalo stations pay for the fiber, or does Cogeco really love Buffalo that much? I'd think it be cheaper and less complicated to just pipe in major market affils via satellite.

Some days, I wouldn't mind having some big market stations back on cable here. I still miss being able to watch WPIX and WWOR. Don't really care much to watch WGN's news out of Chicago, but I'd love to watch some NYC news... and TW piping in NY1 on digital cable doesn't count.

 

[tvlurker]

Interesting... I wonder if the Syracuse stations were given the chance to run their own fiber to stay on the lineup.

They probably would have declined anyway, with Barrington (WSTM's owner) being in very bad financial shape right now, and Sinclair (WSYT's owner) being generally cheap to begin with.  Probably not worth the cost anyway... both corporate owners probably figure they have little or nothing to gain or lose in the Kingston audience since they have no impact on ratings or sales rates.

Still, it's not like the Kingston market does anything to benefit the Buffalo stations either... and Buffalo's even farther away.  Did the two Buffalo stations pay for the fiber, or does Cogeco really love Buffalo that much?  I'd think it be cheaper and less complicated to just pipe in major market affils via satellite.

Just because it's fibre, doesn't mean it's direct fiber. It's probably just fibre to a Cogeco or Rogers headend in the Golden Horseshoe. Rogers and Cogeco already have OTA headends in the Toronto and Hamilton markets, so that's probably the source. Getting it from satellite involves per-sub fees to the satellite company, while in-house fibre doesn't, AFAIK.

It's interesting, though, that they picked Buffalo. Rogers Ottawa gets Detroit via fibre. (But Watertown/Norwood) for PBS). And I think Windsor is served by Cogeco, so they already carry Detroit.

I'm curious, though, if American stations are ever directly connected to Canadian cable systems, My understanding that the satellite TV uplink in Boston is indepedent of the local stations. When Rogers had Eastern Microwave deliver the Rochester stations to Ottawa, was there a direct connection, of just an OTA headend somewhere near Rochester. (The Eastern Microwave connection replaced the earlier SOLV consortium microwave link to a remote headend in Deseronto. SOLV was an acronym for Skyline, Ottawa Cablevision, Laurentian Cablevision, and Videotron, the origanl four cable licensees in the OTtawa-Hull market. Now it's just Rogers on the Ontario side and Videotron on the Quebec side.)

This isn't the first loss. VDN cable, which serves (some) apartment buildings and condos in Montreal, switched from Burlington/Plattsburg for the big 4 to Boston. (VDN is now owned by Bell Canada, so they can easily use the Bell TV (formerly known as Expressvu) feeds.) VDN still carries VPT and Mountain Lake PBS, though.

Videotron, the primary cable company in Montreal still carries WCAX/WPTZ/WVNY/WFFF.

 

[jiminCT]

I think the Cogeco operations in the Toronto area had a lot to do with the Kingston franchise carrying the Buffalo stations. Certainly not a local station (ala Watertown)...but geographically closer than Boston or Detroit. In truth, I think at this point they are more concerned about getting US network programming rather than the local content (since there is so little left).

Regarding the direct connection of American stations to Canadian cable companies: The Burlington VT/Plattsburgh NY stations are still microwaved througout Quebec (from Chicoutimi all the way out to the Gaspe Penninsula). While the Montreal cable companies can probably pick up the US signals via antenna, I think some of them get the microwave feed. It's the same link that sends the CBC (CBMT), SRC, and CTV (CFCF) down to the Burlington VT area systems.

 

[eng5]

When Rogers had Eastern Microwave deliver the Rochester stations to Ottawa, was there a direct connection, of just an OTA headend somewhere near Rochester.

I had always heard of OTA receive points in Deseronto, but I have no first-hand knowledge of that. By the mid-90's Eastern had a feedpoint in WHEC's building at Pinnacle Hill. The stations supplied baseband from their STL's to Eastern there, and Eastern microwaved it around the Horseshoe. WHEC and WOKR used Eastern's path from Attica back to Pinnacle for their ENG receive sites.

Eastern became EMI, then Intermedia, then I think part of MCI. Either Intermedia or MCI decided to get out of the analog video business entirely, which led to the loss of the Rochester signals in Ottawa.

 

[jiminCT]

Microwave as a delivery method for distant signals is pretty rare now. There are lot of towers in the North Country that EMI had that are now used for cell and landline phone service...