Sorry if I'm resurrecting this, but there MIGHT (MIGHT, as in, extremely slim chance) be a chance that something could happen with these subchannels soon if what I saw today is any indication.
When WTOV began broadcasting their news in HD, a lot of stuff that wasn't usually broadcasting in HD on that channel despite being advertised in HD format (such as Jeopardy and WOF) suddenly was (some of the local commercials suddenly got upgrades, too).
Well, WTRF has just launched (as in, Dec 29th, 2011) their news in HD. Of course, right now, the ABC feed was still in SD for the simulcast (for some odd reason, right now, the 7.1 feed is down on DirecTV (the "No need to call" screen, if anyone is familiar with that "tech difficulty" screen). They launched it with a slightly better graphics package (though they didn't change everything; the way they display the 7 day forecast is still in the same format, which is an absolute mess of clouds and crap that I'm surprised anyone can make out what's what) and a new music package.
Thing is, if what happened when WTOV went HD happens with WTRF and its subs, there could be changes coming for the FOX and ABC feeds, too. I'm having my fingers crossed, but knowing how WTRF has been, I doubt they'll change anything.
I've also heard a few other things that could either ease or complicate the situation:
- Locals have the ability to enforce "non-duplicate" laws (not sure how corporations continue to be allowed to hold so much power) so they could be the only ones that a carrier is ALLOWED to give you in that area period. Not sure the specifics on these laws, but it could prevent DirecTV from doing certain things about situations like this.
- WTRF has had a good relationship with Comcast in the past. Comcast had WTRF newscasts on their VOD service, even. This might be a sign that, unless what I hope happens actually does, that DTV might never get the ABC/FOX feeds, because Comcast might actually have exclusive rights to broadcast them in HD, as someone on another forum speculated. Then again, that sounds pretty far fetched that Comcast would be allowed to do such a thing (but again, I'm dumbfounded sometimes on how much power some of these companies are allowed to possess and what a crapload of money can do to the game).
But yeah, hopefully the launch of HD news on WTRF is a sign of fixes to come.