Weather alerts on Locals are driving me nuts - Season Finale of LOST ruined

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EmpireState

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Mar 1, 2008
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WOI ABC5 in Des Moines, IA ran weather alerts during the last hour-and-a-half of the Season Finale of LOST last night. The weather alerts downgraded the HD feed to SD and also reduced the aspect ration from 16x9 to 4x3.

To add insult to injury, they announced they would re-broadcast the episode at 12:05 AM and then ran the weather alerts during the entire 2 hour re-broadcast.

What a great way to end the season. No HD, no 16x9, just a 4:3 picture with a radar map, a news ticker crawling along the bottom, and a bunch of channel logos.

Does anyone else have insane locals like I do?
 
In defense of the local TV stations, this is a no-win situation for them--until Neilson or the NAB or whoever creates smaller 3-county markets which would minimize such weather alerts, but I just don't see that happening. The "no-win" here is if a community is impacted by a tornado and there was no weather alert for THAT community there's going be **** to pay. Then there are those in part of the TV market who aren't being affected by the same severe weather and they're crying foul because their favorite program was interrupted. Then I also see where TV stations are victims of their own technology--they invest gazillions of dollars in steroid-infested super humdinger doppler radar (so powerful we can count the hairs on your body) and they must use it and show it off every chance they get to justify the mortage on it. Also, if EVERYONE in the US would invest in a weather alert radio ($40-$50), then MAYBE TV stations wouldn't feel the need to push weather alerts.
 
eacalhoun said:
In defense of the local TV stations, this is a no-win situation for them--until Neilson or the NAB or whoever creates smaller 3-county markets which would minimize such weather alerts, but I just don't see that happening. The "no-win" here is if a community is impacted by a tornado and there was no weather alert for THAT community there's going be **** to pay. Then there are those in part of the TV market who aren't being affected by the same severe weather and they're crying foul because their favorite program was interrupted. Then I also see where TV stations are victims of their own technology--they invest gazillions of dollars in steroid-infested super humdinger doppler radar (so powerful we can count the hairs on your body) and they must use it and show it off every chance they get to justify the mortage on it. Also, if EVERYONE in the US would invest in a weather alert radio ($40-$50), then MAYBE TV stations wouldn't feel the need to push weather alerts.
Click to expand...

I agree, last nights alerts were justified. But many times they do it when only a few drops of rain fall. Also, the re-broadcast was supposed to be the compromise with the fans and they ruined that too. That makes no sense. It was the Season Finale. All those loyal fans who have watched that local station all season, and they are repaid this way. The humanity.
 
Sounds like your local stations need to upgrade hardware. I know some of my locals still have to downgrade to SD to do the graphics and alerts, but a couple of them have upgraded last I knew so they could still provide the HD signal while doing the map overlays and crawlers.
 
It bugs the crap out of me too here in Dallas.

I wish they would simulcast programs on one of their secondary digital channels when they know they are going to interrupt every 10 minutes and also overlay stuff on a quarter of the display.

At least make some use of the other digital channels you have..... even if it only helps those who have OTA at this point.

Of course I say that not knowing whether they have the right to broadcast it on another digital channel or not. However, sometimes they will rebroadcast a show that was interrupted on a sister channel later that night. So surely they should be able to do something like that.

Overlays totally ruin shows... broadcast networks and cable networks are both bad about it equally. Some cable networks are unbearable.
 
My station here had the first 10 minutes of Lost in SD with a weather bug. It is very annoying that they do not have the equipment to put on screen messages up in HD. But, they seeem to have the technology to put the station ID up in HD, the station logo is about 3x bigger than the ABC logo...
 
I used to live in Des Moines, and I must say WOI Ames is worst station I have ever seen. They used to pre-empt a ton of network shows. In fact they used to have a policy of no-reruns. If a program had been run before on ABC that season, they would blackout and substitute local programing everytime for the rest of the season. If I lived in that DMA, I would move and pick an HD market, or at least call NPS and give them an address in Kentland, IN or Jordan, MT so I could get all the national networks.
 
I have it happen to me too, and to add even more insult, not only is the video down converted to SD, and 4:3, they also mute the audio throughout the entire time and have a loud annoying beeping noise.
 
I was watching CSI NY from Wednesday last night and here is how our recently added LIN CBS affiliate handes it... much better than there ABC and NBC counterparts who downrezz... but they ran it several times which was annoying...
 

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The local Fox did it during the Coca Cola 600 on Sunday...even after the weather had passed they STILL kept the HD feed in black bar hell
 
patmurphey said:
Why is this on a Dish Network thread?
Click to expand...

b/c Dish took Voom away.. and that caused the bad weather... and thus ruined the only non-Voom-based HD show in existence.


(hey, its about as well-reasoned as half of the Voom threads ;) )

and yes, our locals in NC do the same thing to HD shows at any excuse with their fancy we-paid-too-much-and-must-show-it-off 5D weather radar
 
EmpireState said:
WOI ABC5 in Des Moines, IA ran weather alerts during the last hour-and-a-half of the Season Finale of LOST last night. The weather alerts downgraded the HD feed to SD and also reduced the aspect ration from 16x9 to 4x3.

To add insult to injury, they announced they would re-broadcast the episode at 12:05 AM and then ran the weather alerts during the entire 2 hour re-broadcast.

What a great way to end the season. No HD, no 16x9, just a 4:3 picture with a radar map, a news ticker crawling along the bottom, and a bunch of channel logos.

Does anyone else have insane locals like I do?
Click to expand...

Sorry for you bad luck. Here is where you can watch the Lost episodes online, ABC.com Full Episode Player .
 

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