Major Boston TV outage that almost no one is noticing..... State of over the air TV today..

[Laurence Glavin]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: Richard Chonak
>Sent: 04/23/12 12:08 AM
>To: boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org
>Subject: Re: Major Boston TV outage that almost no one is noticing..... State of over the air TV today..

 >Channel 2 has posted an announcement about the state of the outage >issues that started on April 8: >http://www.wgbh.org/articles/WGBH-2-Signal-Update-April-18-5979 >Apparently the Needham tower antenna needs extensive repairs, which may >take up to a month. >The comments below the article are a hoot: they seem to have been >written by an incredibly cranky bunch of viewers. >--RC 
 PBS viewers take their television seriously, which may explain some of the "cranky" comments as they are
 forced to wait for repairs. "Occupy" protesters may be targeting the 1%, but people who rely on over-the-air TV
 may be the 2% or 5% or 10% depending on where they live (Boston & vicinity is supposed to have 98% cable and
 satellite penetration). Some commenters say they live in the Boston suburbs but can't get channel 2/19 while
 another says he or she lives near Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (official name of the Ocean State)
 and used to get channels 2/19 and 44/43 just fine! I have cable to my big-screen HD set in the living room
 but use a powered-indoor TV antenna attached to a government -subsidized digital-to-analog converter box
 for viewing on an older analog/CTR set in my dining area. Channel 2/19 came in with a rock-steady picture,
 along with channels 4/30, 5/20, 44/43 and 7/42 until April 8th. For all the talk about the problems with DTV on VHF, where
 I live north of Boston, channels 9/9 and 11/11 in NH are solid as well. The quizzical thing is the fact that channels
 25/31 and 56/41 are very difficult for me to get no matter how I orient the antenna, and a glance at the FCC
 info on their facilities indicates that both of them utilize directional antennas, with the one for WLVI-TV 56/41
 pointed due WEST, away from Boston. At his site, Scott Fybush guessed that WLVI didn't want to waste any
 signal going over water, but with the antsy reception of over-the-air DTV reception, if a station out there on
 route 128 wanted to reach viewers in Boston and the immediate northern and southern cities and towns, it
 would seem as if they'd want all that signal to go towards downtown. I posted a comment to
 the WGBH announcement pointing out that, as I just learned a few days ago, the Cedar Street, Needham
 tower is now owned by an out-of-town firm. So the problems that people around here are experiencing
 will have to be rectified by them.