Fox out on DirecTV?

[stiffler1414]

Does anyone have any idea what is going on with Fox 56? Went out last night during the NFC Championship (argh!) still out this morning. Directv message on the screen that they are aware. Anyone know what is going on?

[bertram]

WOLF antenna went dead last night, which transmits to the satellite TV companies and cable companies around the NEPA area. WOLF did not have a competent backup plan and only viewers who could receive WSWB off the west mountain in Scranton, or another FOX affiliate could watch the rest of the game. The transmitter is back on and working, but this is not the first time it has failed.

[KyL416]

I love how you say a "competent" back up plan as if every other station in the country has one. Somethings can be backed up via a generator or via redundancy, other things cannot. And even then, it isn't something that can be done with a "flip of a switch" as many of you believe, especially with the storm last night.

Puutting it on WSWB is perhaps the BEST thing they can do in the situation, unless you would rather have WSWB continue with their syndicated programming for the night allowing NO ONE to see the end of game. So it's pretty rude of you to accuse them of being "incompetent" unless you can go up to Penobscot and replace all the engineers on staff and fix it yourself...

And before anyone complains about the removal of the other Fox affiliates on some cable systems blaming retransmission consent as if it's only something WOLF and WBRE/WYOU does, you should know that the Fox O&O's (Fox 29 Philly and Fox 5 NY) are also using retransmission consent too, even on out of market cable systems, and they just had a big battle with Time Warner Cable at the end of the year over fees.

[bertram]

I apologize to the engineering crews who work hard to get these things straightened out, I don't express resentment toward them. Management at New Age Media is what is annoying, not keeping up with everything because their programming doesn't sell much advertising, outages have happened multiple times in the past year. I better stay out of this though, there is so much I do not know about the broadcast television model for smaller stations.

[KyL416]

Contrary to what you want to believe, syndicated programming in HD is NOT the norm. It's currently limited to major and large station groups, medium station groups only recently started slowly getting the ability. In order to have syndicated HD they need to rebuild the entire master control from the ground up. Currently most stations in the country can only do HD if they're retransmitting the feed live as they get it from the network. WVIA can reair HD stuff since they're a PBS station and got government grants to basically rebuild their entire studio, WNEP only started last year after a rebuild of their master control (I think theirs is in Virginia). New Age Media got control of WOLF, WSWB and the former WILF (now WQMY) after the previous owner Pegasus went BANKRUPT. The stations were already long neglected by Pegasus when New Age got control of them, and they had to focus their effort on getting the smaller stations in smaller markets broadcasting at full power (or even on the air in some cases) to meet the FCC's deadlines that Pegasus neglected even more. They did manage to get WSWB broadcasting at full power and in HD after they got control, although they had to deal with a defective decoder that took forever to get fixed by the manufacturer. (WSWB's signal in Scranton has coverage less than WOLF though, which is the reason why Fox's main signal was moved to 56 and the WB was launched on 38 after the then WWLF 56 moved from Hazleton to a stronger signal on Penobscot. They have long term plans to move WSWB to Penobscot on a new number in about a year or two). They also got WQMY's full power signal up and running in Williamsport and added multicasting giving Central PA viewers access to an easy to recieve CW signal on 53-3 and an HD feed of Fox on 53-2 since WOLF is the only station without a network of translators. (WILF used to simulcast WOLF when it was Fox 38 and then WSWB 38 up until the launch of WQMY, and cable was already growing by the time WOLF launched in the mid 80s so they saw no need to get a bunch of translators like the older WNEP, WBRE, WYOU and WVIA did prior to then)

As for outages, not sure if you noticed but last year was the transition. Stations across the country had planned and unplanned outages as a result of the need to remove analog equipment and retune and move digital equipment in their permanent spots. (Many stations in the country literally had their digital transmitters in the middle of a hallway or an empty office since the transmitter room was full and had to wait for the analog equipment to be removed to put the digital equipment in their final spots). In addition to WOLF's digital and analog transmitters, their building and tower was shared with WNEP's rental analog transmitter since the collapse, as well as the old digital transmitter on 49. Anytime someone climbs a tower, the signals have to go off so the tower crews could safely be near the antenna bays without being harmed by RF emissions. They had to remove WOLF's analog equipment earlier in the year, they had to remove WNEP's rental analog equipment after it went off in June, and they'll have to, if they haven't already, climb it again to remove WNEP's 49 digital equipment since WNEP moved to their newly rebuilt tower with a stronger signal on 50. The additional construction occuring on Penobscot to replace WNEP also added a factor where there were some instances where PPL had to cut power to bring new trunks up there, not to mention the severe storms in the summer and winter storms in recent months that resulted in the entire mountain or parts of it losing power. There was an instance where a construction truck clipped one of the lines a while back too. At least here the stations are split between towers so at least some channels will be on when they have to climb a tower. In NYC they all share the Empire State Building, and whenever one station needs access to the antenna bays, EVERY station has to go off air.

[bertram]

Your insights are greatly appreciated, I have been owned in terms of capacity of knowledge on this area of study. I will lay this contemporary issue to rest, as it may be years before this area sees progress in the means of local television. Peace.