"Antenna Man" rakes WGBH over the coals

[George Allen]

Those are very good points; the animosity comes 
from losing a HD Ch2/44 OTA signal.  Even with 
the [coming soon I hope] bumpup to 36kW, I don't 
think it will equal what RF32 has [?].  With the 
chess moves below, where would NBC-10 find a new 
high-power Boston spectrum home?  Not that I 
worry, but when below comes to pass, should NBC be worrying?


At 04:10 PM 7/15/2020, Scott Fybush wrote:
I don't get the animosity toward WGBH.

They resisted selling off their WGBX license for 
years, while almost every other public TV entity took the fast cash and ran.Â

They could have gotten tens of millions for it 
when stations like WNED in Buffalo and WMHT in Albany were unloading theirs.Â

Instead, they've played a very long game. They 
deliberately didn't sell WGBX's spectrum, which 
means they still have a UHF ATSC 1 signal that's 
as good as any in the market. The WGBH 2 
programming is available that way for anyone who can't get the RF 5 signal.

And guess what? Once the ATSC 3 transition gets 
moving in earnest, it's a good bet the WGBH 
license will be used for ATSC 3. Which means 
while other broadcasters with only one license 
have to scramble to find channel-sharing partners 
to maintain dual ATSC 1/3 operations, WGBH will be all set internally. Â

And once ATSC 1 sunsets, which could be years 
from now yet, WGBH can move the ATSC 3 signal to 
UHF and *still* have another 6 MHz of VHF spectrum for more ATSC 3 data.Â

They're thinking several moves ahead on the 
chessboard compared to most of the industry. I 
don't hate them for that. I admire them for it.Â

On Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 3:12 PM George Allen <geo.allen@comcast.net> wrote:
Yeah, they really took the $ and ran.  And...
they get ongoing $$ from NBC10 by renting out
RF32 (wgbx) to NBC10 for 15-1 and 15-2.  So they
cashed out twice at OTA viewer's
expense.  Somehow that seems not right, even if
legal.  Cord-cutting is rampant [I'm one of
them], so tho maybe at one time OTA wasn't a big
deal, it's a bigger deal now.  Why don't they
just stream HDTV over the web?  Doesn't solve it
for everyone but would make me happy.

I have mixed emotions about all this.  It was a
good deal for them and raised a lot of cash.  The
Q is: what are they going to do with all that moola?
    George


From: Richard Chonak <richard@chonak.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:22:41 -0400
Subject: "Antenna Man" rakes WGBH over the coals

The "Antenna Man" of Bethlehem, PA usually
devotes his YouTube videos to testing TV
antennas, and rating their performance at his location in the Poconos.

Viewers all over the country ask him for advice,
so in a video released July 14, he devoted an
episode to explaining the FCC spectrum auction
that led to many changes in reception.

In particular, he zeroed in on PBS stations that
took big payouts to move to low-VHF
frequencies.  The prime example, of course, is
WGBH's move to RF channel 5, and the $218M
jackpot the auction yielded for it. Lamenting the
poorer service which the public got, he shows a
list of a dozen or so station employees with
salaries running up to $400,000 and beyond it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrFib1jaBP0

--RC