Re: Channel 45, Schenectady

["Douglas J. Broda" <dougbroda@mindspring.com>]

At 02:27 PM 8/14/98 -0700, Peter Q. George wrote:

>Channel 51 would still have to put a city grade over Pittsfield, MA. 
>The only way to do that and give a decent signal to the Capital
>District is to move the transmitter to Mt. Greylock.  No easy chore. <snip
of good stuff>

Would 51 be a must-carry for the Capital District from Mt. Greylock? (I
don't pretend to understand what's covered by must-carry, based on claims
from other markets.... any market area designation I've seen doesn't seem
to match those claims.)

>Something tells me that WMHT never really had any big plans for
>Channel 45 in the first place, since they bought the station from
>Union Street Video.  Take a look at Channel 45's track record since
>being owned by WMHT. <snip of more good stuff>

They had big plans when they bought it from Union Street Video... but never
implemented them, never got them beyond the paper stage, and they were
remarkably unrealistic anyway. Since the re-air, it has indeed been
overflow PBS stuff. (BTW, is there *any* situation in the US where there
are two co-owned PBS affiliates and the second is anything other than
overflow?)

>     As for Channel *29, you figure they must have figured out that
>only one public TV station could survive in the Capital District. 
>Will they ever learn ?

I hope so. Besides, with HDTV there will be *no* real raison d'etre for a
second market, so the investment in a second PBS station would be
short-term. (And 29 is educationally allocated, I believe, and would thus
have virtually no resale value.) I can't understand why they'd even apply.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
Douglas J. Broda
Broda and Burnett
Attorneys at Law
80 Ferry Street
Troy, New York 12180
(518) 272-0580
dougbroda@mindspring.com
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