"Antenna Man" rakes WGBH over the coals

[Scott Fybush]

I'm pretty sure NBC has a solid long-term deal with WGBH for continued
carriage. They're going to want to have ATSC 3 service on WBTS, too, which
will happen via RF 5, at least at first.

And when ATSC 3 arrives, it means more data throughput on the 6 MHz of
RF... so you'll have HD (and maybe even 4K) versions of 2, 44 *and* NBC
available that way.

On Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:09 PM George Allen <geo.allen@comcast.net> wrote:

> 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?
> Â  Â  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
>
>
>