Questions about the PBS mux on 99 KU

[comfortably_numb]

Just curious who this mux is intended for. I know PBS feeds the News Hour nightly to affiliates on HD03, but who or what are the "national" East and West feeds for? Are there markets in the US without a locally produced PBS station that air the national feeds? Or are they just there for the general public?

 

[Mr Tony]

Are there markets in the US without a locally produced PBS station that air the national feeds

Yes. My market being one of them. Cable gets KTCA Minneapolis. Dish and Directv gets the National feeds. What's weird is Directv stream gets KTCA instead.

See attached from Dish for Mankato

 

[comfortably_numb]

Yes. My market being one of them. Cable gets KTCA Minneapolis. Dish and Directv gets the National feeds. What's weird is Directv stream gets KTCA instead.

See attached from Dish for Mankato
View attachment 179637

So Dish is picking up the national feed from 99?

 

[Mr Tony]

Other Directv markets with the National PBS (taken from the master list here at satelliteguys)
Abilene, TX
Bakersfield, CA
Beaumont, TX
Dothan, AL
Harlingen, TX
Hattiesburg, MS
Lafayette, IN
Laredo, TX
Mankato, MN (but as I mentioned Directv stream gets Mpls PBS)
Palm Springs, CA
Parkersburg, WV
Rockford, IL
Santa Barbara, CA
Sherman, TX
St Joe, MO
Tri Cities, TN
Tyler, TX
Utica, NY
Wheeling, WV
Wichita Falls, TX
Yuma, AZ
Zanesville, OH

On cable the markets get a neighboring PBS and a fair amount of these markets have access to PBS via a translator. But satellite has different rules on how to carry out of market nets.

 

[Mr Tony]

So Dish is picking up the national feed from 99?

I assume so. PBS affiliates pick up the other PBS stations off 99W for Create, World and FNX

 

[comfortably_numb]

But satellite has different rules on how to carry out of market nets.

From your list, I ran a St Joseph, MO address through the Dish locals lookup and it gives them KCPT from Kansas City instead of National PBS. Do Dish and Direct still differ in how they handle locals?

 

[Mr Tony]

Dish always used different rules when it came to neighboring stations (they got in huge trouble for it back in the day) but PBS usually they give customers the neighboring station. I assume it's on the same transponder as the 2 markets in question so it's easier to carry. (That use to be real easy to look up what stations were on which transponder and spotbeam. Not anymore)
Locals they can only carry a neighboring station if there is no licensed network in the market. Mankato has no ABC so we get Minneapolis ABC. Until a few years ago we had no NBC so we got Minneapolis NBC KARE. When Mankato got a NBC the satellite providers had to remove the distant net. PBS is a different animal I guess.

Note the big list is from Directv, not Dish.

 

[N5XZS]

I remembered long time ago that Directv used to carry KENW-DT out of Portales, NM and can be seen in Albuquerque metro areas KNME-DT and KNMD-DT "ATSC 3.0 " and the rest of state of New Mexico other than Las Cruces KRWG-DT which is part of El Paso KCOS-DT? market.

That was more than 10+ years ago, Direct TV may have changed that over river of time.

Just saying...

 

[Mr Tony]

I remembered long time ago that Directv used to carry KENW-DT out of Portales, NM and can be seen in Albuquerque metro areas KNME-DT and KNMD-DT "ATSC 3.0 " and the rest of state of New Mexico other than Las Cruces KRWG-DT which is part of El Paso KCOS-DT? market.

Directv carries KENW and KNME on satellite for Albuquerque market. I know KENW complained to the FCC about being in the Lubbock market (found it...was back in 2015) when they moved the county to Lubbock market but KENW complained and got moved to Albuquerque stations but not Lubbock market.
They do carry KRWG in El Paso market because Dona Ana county is part of the El Paso market (only NM market that is)

 

[Mr Tony]

So was doing some looking around and back when PBS moved from AMC3 at 87W to AMC21 at 125W (almost 17 years ago) there was a document sent to PBS stations on how to change the azimuth and elevation to the new satellite. Also lots of documents about the TP changes back when they went HD for the feeds. So yeah the KU feeds on 99W are for the PBS stations to grab feeds and such.

 

[TheBUDGuy]

As others have explained, TV providers will sometimes use the national feeds on their platform if there is no local affiliate within a market. As for the stations, the feeds still serve a great purpose. Stations will sometimes air a program as it is feeding via satellite in real-time, such as with "PBS News Hour" or "Frontline". Stations may also record programming from the feeds for later airing (focusing on HD01 and HD02).

The same services provided via satellite (except FNX) are also provided to stations via the IP-based interconnection system they use, called sIX ("six"). This has some benefits, such as one system acting as backup in case there are issues with the other. sIX is a cloud-based system and is the primary source for almost all programs that air on PBS stations, including programs from APT and NETA. The program feeds on HD01 and HD02 are sourced from the same files that are on the sIX interconnection system. sIX can also act as a backup for stations that record content from HD01 or HD02. If there is an issue with the program feed on HD01, there is no issue because the stations can just record the program from HD02 three hours later. However, if an issue impacts the program feed on HD02, stations will need to download the program from sIX. It's a lot more convenient to source programming from sIX than from recording a linear satellite feed, yes, but I do miss recording pre-feeds from HD03 (and the former HD04 and HD05 feeds).