Question about a Dark UHF channel in Boston...

[Peter Q. George]

Originally, Channel 33 (W33AV) was a CP for W54AT, Brockton, MA.  It was owned by Boston Catholic Television, but never made it to the air.  It was sold and moved to Gloucester as W33AV ("The BOX").  W33AV was briefly WRAP-LP, due to the over-abundance of rap videos at the time on the channel.  The station went silent for a while and returned to the air in 1996 from the old WHDH-TV (FM-128) tower as W54CN, a repeater for WPXB-TV (Channel 60) Merrimack, NH.  Eventually, the //WPXB-TV was discontinued. Eventually it moved to Channel 40 as W40BO.  But the signal was pitiful due to many antenna issues.  After many years of "on-air" and "off-air" operation, the signal was restored and has been a repeater of WBPX for many years.  

The reason for having W40BO on the air as a repeater of WBPX?  Beats me.     


Peter Q. George (K1XRB)
Whitman, Massachusetts
"Scanning the bands since 1967"
radiojunkie3@yahoo.com
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--- On Mon, 8/10/09, Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> wrote:

> From: Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com>
> Subject: Re: Question about a Dark UHF channel in Boston...
> To: "Bob Hale" <n1wbd@peoplepc.com>
> Cc: "Boston Radio TV list" <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
> Date: Monday, August 10, 2009, 2:28 PM
> Bob Hale wrote:
> > Does anyone remember WAV-TV ch 33 (I believe)? They
> ran a "video jukebox" service where you called a 900 number
> and you could play 3 or 4 music videos for a buck or so?
> Alot of the time all you saw was a playlist to choose from
> and the occasional commercial and not a whole lot of videos
> being played.
> > 
> > I was wondering whatever happened to them? Did they
> try to change programming before going dark? Were they a LP
> station etc?
> > I could'nt find any info on them on the web or on the
> UHF Morgue.
> 
> That was W33AV, and it was an LPTV affiliate of "The Box."
> We had one of those in Rochester, too - WBXO-LP 15, since
> relocated to channel 36. MTV bought The Box to kill off the
> competition, and while some of those LPTVs became MTV2 or
> MTVTres outlets, most got sold off eventually.
> 
> W33AV ultimately became W40BO, which is owned by Pax and
> operating (if it's really on the air?) from the FM128 tower
> on channel 40. It was granted a CP in June to flash-cut to
> digital on 40.
> 
> s
>