WISN Channel 12 ABC

[Tom Sielicki]

I took a tour of Channel 12 WISN Tuesday and asked about HDTV.  They said they are way behind and will be asking for an extension because they say there is no way they can meet the FCC mandate.  They say they cannot get construction permits for their tower. Most of their equipment looked old to me and could use some updates.  I cannot believe how much tape is still used for video clips.

Well, when the snow melts the UHF antenna goes on the roof.  Is there a Madison HDTV users group?   Thank god for WTMJ. (and hopefully CBS58 soon)

[Tom Snyder]

The thing that just corks me about all these waiver-seeking wienies is that they expect us to believe that they've been working their little fannies off trying to make that deadline but the bad old FCC just didn't give them enough time.

The real answer is that they just don't want to do it any sooner than they aboslutely have to, and are loooking for any excuse that John Q.Public might be dumb enough to believe.

[tenth_t2]

Let's all hold hands now.....Take a deep breath.....relax.....exhale.....

Feel better?  Didn't think so.  Wanted to try though.

Yes, I do have reasonable success with the ABC affiliate WKOW is channel 26.  Depending on where you are in Germantown, and what your surrounding terrain is like, it may be possible.

Drop me a note if you want specifics of what's working for me.

Greg O.

[Joseph S]

 

will be asking for an extension because they say there is no way they can meet the FCC mandate.

I'm not surprised. At least CBS doesn't act like they have a top quality set and the best of anchors. They know what they have and do the best they can with it. I don't know what the budget is, but from the look of the set I can assume they don't have much to work with.

WISN, on the other hand touts superiority, yet they can't even keep the mediocre talent they have for 6 months.  All of their intros and logos were merely swipped/borrowed from the Hearst parent station, WCVB 5 Boston. A station that, surprisingly enough, has been broadcasting in HDTV since 1998!!!!!  This leads me to believe that local mismanagement is issue here and not Hearst being cheap.

With that said, here is the story I was given just 9 days ago.

 

From: "Dean C Maytag"
Date: Tue Feb 19, 2002  09:18:02  AM US/Central
To: edit
Subject: HDTV

WISN intends to meet the May, 2002 deadline to replicate our analog signal on
Channel 34 with a Digital TV product.  At that time we will "pass-through" to
the viewer all "high definition" (HDTV) programming available to us from the
network.  It was our intention to begin transmission prior to this date;
however, WISN is trying to work out issues with the City of Milwaukee to
increase its tower height to fully replicate our analog signal as required by
the FCC.   At this time, the city opposes us on the tower height issue.

As far as the logos are concerned, our intention is to keep the logos on our
analog signal because of the identification concerns in a multi-channel
environment.

Dean Maytag

Director of Broadcast Operations
WISN-TV

The part related to the logo dealt with my gripe about the analog double logo they have no stop.  Neither are really even legible with the overlap so I don't see why they even do this. It certainly doesn't fit the "because of the identification concerns" claim.

The other item that "bugged"   me from the email was "in a multi-channel environment." This had better not mean they intend to multicast with 1 channel of upconverted analog and 3 channels of infomercials.

Good luck  to CBS these next few  weeks and thanks for the nice HDTV test patterns I recorded off the testing today.

I do approve of multicasting the NCAA tournament early rounds and look forward to it.   Other than that instance and perhaps other playoff situations, no multicasting and certainly no zooming of 4:3 and 2.35:1 stuff. Keep it OAR, please!!!




[This message has been edited by Joseph S (edited 03-14-2002).]