Ch 7, the News Station

[Martin Waters]

>Sean Smyth wrote:>Another ~40 hours of news each week works out to just shy of 6 more hours >each day.
            Or considerably less than that, all the way to a possible zero, if it were to rebroadcast some newscasts, a la NECN and others.
      Meanwhile, I see this case as a very early sign of over-the-air TV going the way of AM radio. And unlike AM frequencies -- which keep getting closer to being worth zero -- TV could even get pushed to true extinction by the hordes of lobbyists trying to get the FCC to auction off the rest of the spectrum still assigned to TV.
      With 90 percent-plus (haven't looked up the numbers for a couple years) of  households getting over-the-air TV on cable or satellite, I'm thinking NBC may not be bluffing about putting its Boston affiliate -- using the term loosely -- on a feeble signal (well, feeble like all DTV signals, really) in New Hampshire. I just checked some Web site purporting to show coverage maps for TV. The map key lacked any reference to signal strength numbers, but the outermost line for WNEU, labeled as the typical limit of roof-antenna reception, curved right through the city of Boston. Sorry Hyde Park, Mattapan, most of Dorchester, South Shore, Cape Cod, South Coast, etc.