"The Tube" gone from Minneapolis (WUCW 23-2)??

[Mr Tony]

Is it possible the playing field is not level in this situation?

nah. Sinclair just sucks as an owner. I'm so sick of seeing the crawl & commercials for "SThis station may leave Mediacom soon".

Pretty funny when most of the area is Comcast or Charter so we don't care. There are a couple pockets of Mediacom (the issue is the Mpls DMA is so dang huge that people 200+ miles away still get Mpls) but they are in smaller towns

 

[jegrant]

The Tube is the only OTA digital subchannel carried on digital cable here - and it strangely went missing from the digital cable on-screen guide for a few days, but has now returned. Our local Tube affiliate is WTTV DT // WTTK DT, a Tribune CW station.

I myself have been wondering how The Tube and its station partners intended to comply with the new digital E/I requirements. I still can't believe that The Tube couldn't just come up with 3 hours of *something* reasonably educational to run on Sunday morning or the like. They could have avoided all these disputes.

 

[TNGTony]

I found out that channel 9.2 in Cincinnati which I though was 24-7 radar actually has a few hours a week of NASA TV programming thrown in. So I guess they are in complience. NBC Weather Plus now has some educational programs thrown in too. I cannot find any such thing for "The Tube" in Cinci now so I wonder how they will comply?

See ya
Tony

 

[gdarwin]

The Tube is still on here on NBC 3.3

 

[voomvoom]

The clouds have finally broken, so I've pointed my antenna back towards Columbus, Georgia and Fox54, WXTX still has the Tube showing on 54.2.

Al

 

[goaliebob99]

The tube is still on in chicago on wgn wich is owned and operated by tribune braudcasting

 

[jself1982]

Gone here in Greenville SC on 13.3 WLOS (Sinclair).

 

[Grampaw]

The Tube is still on in Miami (WSFL-DT 39-2) and West Palm Beach (WFLX -DT 29-2).
I always thought Weather was informational/educational programming.

Only 2 stations here with no sub-channels, CBS and MYTV, both owned by CBS-Viacom.

Walt

 

[ghia]

The Tube is still on here in Dallas 33.2 We have several digital channels and sub-channels. Just for fun these are the ones that I can receive:

2-1 Religious
4-1 Fox
4-2 Weather
5-1 NBC
5-2 Weather
8-1 ABC
8-2 Weather
8-3 Traffic, Airport, Parking Lot shots!
11-1 CBS
13-1 PBS
21-1 Independent (1080i) very little hdtv here
21-2 Weather
23-1 Univision
27-1 MyTV
29-1 Independent (Spanish)
33-1 CWTV
33-2 Tube (480i)
39-1 Telemundo
47-1 Religious
49-1 Telefutura
52-1 Independent (480i)
58-1 through 58-5 religious
68-1 ION
68-2 QUBO
68-3 Religious

This is also a USDTV market so there are several stations that have sold off bandwidth, from the scans with my hitachi digital tuner I can tell that before they are remapped to 99-x that 27, 29, 47, and 68 all have sub-channels that are allocating bandwidth to USDTV. There may be more but that is all I see being remapped when I scan the digital channels.

Sorry if I got to far off topic

 

[jcrash]

As of 1/1/07, two critical new FCC rules regarding DTV subchannels went into effect. The first is that all subchannels must carry all required EAS alerts, which requires additional equipment to do. The second, and more costly, is that for every subchannel you have, regardless of programming…you must add 3 hours of children's programming to your core schedule.

 

[voomvoom]

As of 1/1/07, two critical new FCC rules regarding DTV subchannels went into effect. The first is that all subchannels must carry all required EAS alerts, which requires additional equipment to do. The second, and more costly, is that for every subchannel you have, regardless of programming…you must add 3 hours of children's programming to your core schedule.

I believe it also says that this programming can be placed/scheduled on the main channel, so you should still be able to have 24/7 News, 24/7 Weather, 24/7 Religious, 24/7 Shopping, or 24/7 the Tube?

Al

 

[Mr Tony]

I believe it also says that this programming can be placed/scheduled on the main channel, so you should still be able to have 24/7 News, 24/7 Weather, 24/7 Religious, 24/7 Shopping, or 24/7 the Tube?

Al

if thats the case, then in Mpls CW qualifies. Hell they have CW Kids on Satuyrdays for like 3 or 4 hours

 

[techpuppy]

The EAS requirement is the cause of the problem for some stations. They would now have to pass along EAS tests and alerts on all subchannels as well as their main channel. Some stations just don't want to invest in the equipment to do so.

As far as the educational/instructional programming requirement, it now applies to subchannels as well. WeatherPlus already has a segment that fufills the requirement. A station can opt to increase the E/I programming on their main channel rather than add it to a subchannel. The drawback there is that they would lose the infomercial availability to something that might be of interest. Isnt' it interesting that this seems to be more of a problem with large corporate multi-station owners??

 

[daydreamer]

WICS and WICD here in central IL have dropped them too. They are both owned by Sinclair. Tuned to 15-2 and 20-2 and its not there anymore.

 

[Jim5506]

AH, the law of unintended consequences.

A government fiat screws up the free market again.

When will they ever learn.

But, it could free up some bandwidth for better HD.

 

[sfollenius]

Gone here in Greenville SC on 13.3 WLOS (Sinclair).

I just checked mine and WLOS gone, its mirroring 13.2 the WB

 

[lunkie]

The tube is still on 24-2 out of Toledo, Ohio. But somthing just don't seem right about requiring 3 hours of childrens programing. Just about everywhere you turn to any news source all you hear about is overweight kids. So what's the governments solution, have the FCC make sure the kids stay inside watching tv. Brillant.

 

[pro96]

Still good here in L.A on channel 5-5 KTLA-DT5

 

[howie14]

The Tube disappeared from a subcarrier to Baltimore's CW affiliate last week as well. They put up an on screen message that it was no longer carried due to a contractual problem.

The station is managed, but not owned, by Sinclair.

 

[mwgiii]

This is an issue between Sinclair and The Tube.

In response to this on AVS Forums:
There's a thread in the main HD programming sub-forum about Sinclair's cancellation of The Tube on all of their stations. Either something to do with contracts or something to do with emergency broadcast system. I noticed that ***** has put up an SD feed of MNTV, just like he does with The CW.

A station engineer for Sinclair replied:
You're correct on the EAS issue. As of Jan. 1, all digital subchannels must have full EAS capabilities. Sinclair wanted The Tube to supply the equipment, and The Tube felt otherwise. They couldn't reach an agreement, so we had to pull them.