December 3 TV rescan

[Bob Nelson]

Wikipedia:
"The *class A television service* is a system for regulating some low-power
television <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_station> (LPTV
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-power_broadcasting>) stations in the
United States. Class A stations are denoted by the broadcast callsign
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_callsign> suffix "-CA" (analog)
or "-CD" (digital), although very many analog -CA stations have a digital
companion channel that was assigned the -LD suffix used by regular
(non-class-A) digital LPTV stations."

On Monday, November 20, 2017, A Joseph Ross <joe@attorneyross.com> wrote:

> I'm plenty confused, but maybe there's one thing you can clear up easily:
> What does the CD stand for in WFXZ-CD?
>
> On 11/19/2017 4:01 PM, Scott Fybush wrote:
>
>> If only there were someone keeping track of all of these things and
>> writing them up in (somewhat) concise fashion every week...
>>
>> Here's what I wrote about this particular situation in the October 2 NERW:
>>
>> "But those are all shares of commercial stations with other commercial
>> stations, and the FCC is allowing some much stranger bedfellows, allowing
>> noncommercial stations to yield up some of their bandwidth to provide bits
>> that commercial TV stations can use (and pay for!) to stay on the air.
>>
>> We’d initially thought that was all that was happening to WFXZ-CD
>> (Channel 24), the Azteca America outlet that’s been running a 15 kW
>> directional signal from the FM128 master tower site on Chestnut Street in
>> Newton. The Rodriguez family collected a whopping $64 million in auction
>> proceeds to give up RF 24. How much were they going to pay to have the
>> WFXZ-CD signal hosted on some of the spectrum of WGBH (Channel 2), after
>> the market’s senior public TV station completed its own move from RF 19
>> down to the wastelands of low-VHF on RF 5?
>>
>> As it turns out: WFXZ is paying nothing for its new home. That’s because,
>> according to the channel-share plan recently filed with the FCC, the
>> WFXZ-CD license is being donated to the WGBH Educational Foundation. WGBH
>> is already in line for $162 million in auction proceeds for its move to
>> low-VHF. It was also keeping a UHF signal via WGBX channel 44, which moves
>> from RF 43 to 32 in the repack. And now, WGBH will end up with a third
>> license in the market in the form of WFXZ. As a class A low-power station,
>> the WFXZ license doesn’t come with any must-carry rights for cable or
>> satellite, but it does at least come with that “commercial” designation,
>> which means that WGBH could find a commercial tenant to lease out WFXZ’s
>> portion of the new RF 5 signal for whatever viewers in the market can see
>> it on low-VHF. (Or even use a for-profit subsidiary to operate WFXZ
>> commercially itself; that’s something WGBH has done in the past with other
>> non-broadcast ventures.)
>>
>> WGBH isn’t alone in this deal – in Miami, public broadcaster WPBT is also
>> getting a low-power commercial station via donation, which will give it the
>> ability to use some of its repacked UHF spectrum commercially if it so
>> chooses.
>>
>> However this plays out, it will be part of a bigger set of changes at
>> WGBH. As one of the industry’s innovation hubs, it’s a near-certainty that
>> WGBH will use one of its signals in the short term as a market test bed for
>> the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard. We’d expect that RF 5 will be used for
>> that purpose, which probably means a swap at some point amidst the repack
>> to put the familiar WGBH calls on what’s now the WGBX UHF license, which
>> will likely be the new home for WGBH’s main 2.1 channel. (Confused yet?)"
>>
>> On 11/19/2017 12:05 PM, Mark Laurence wrote:
>>
>>> I came across a message on WFXZ channel 24 telling viewers they’d have
>>> to rescan their TVs on December 3 if they want to continue to watch the
>>> over-the-air broadcast. Any idea what is happening then?
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>>
>>
> --
> A. Joseph Ross, J.D. · 1340 Centre Street, Suite 103 · Newton, MA 02459
> 617.367.0468 · Fax:617.507.7856 · http://www.attorneyross.com
>