We have a few pairs of those in the Cleveland DMA, all due to frequency-sharing arrangements:
- WOIO 19 (CBS) and WUAB 43 (CW) both owned by Gray Media Group. Guide data for host station WOIO gets mapped to both OTA channels, including guide data for 019-02 going to 043-02.
- WVPX 23 (ION) and WDLI 17 (ION Plus) both have ION guide data, with channel 023-01 guide data also being mapped to 017-01.
- WEAO 49 (PBS) and WRLM 47 (TCT) with WEAO guide data being mapped to both 049-01 and 047-01. This one is especially obvious, since the channels are right next to each other in the guide.
The problem is that when two stations share the same frequency, they now both have the same TSID (Transport Stream ID). The channels are mapped to their virtual channels in the guide using the subchannel numbers in the TSID, which also include different primary channel numbers for each station. (WOIO is 019-01 while WUAB is 043-01 for example.) Dish's guide data mapping system was not set up to handle two different primary channel numbers for the same TSID. Instead, it only looks for the TSID and subchannel number (-01, -02, etc.) ignoring the primary channel number. As a result, the stations with WOIO's TSID (WOIO and WUAB) both get WOIO's guide data. Dish is still uplinking the WUAB OTA guide data mapping, but it is looking for WUAB's old TSID. I have an old ViP211k that was scanned before the repack (when I could still receive WUAB OTA) and it still has correct guide data for WUAB 043-01 and 043-02. So, I still get the guide data, but cannot get the actual OTA signal. On receivers that can get OTA signal from WOIO (and have been re-scanned since the repack) the WOIO guide data would show up in both places as I described above.