For Madison OTA Viewers

[Kevin Arnold]

Tom Weeden, WMTV engineer (channel NBC-15 & digital 19 in Madison) posted the following on AVS on 12-4.  If you regularly watch the Mad City stations you might want to sign up for this email.  Be kinda nice if the Milwaukee locals did the same:

WMTV-DT (NBC 15-1) was on Monday night. We lost one of the 8 power supplies in the transmitter a couple of weeks ago, so power is down to about 80%...waiting on a replacement. But if you're in Madison, you still ought to have plenty of signal left to work with.

We send out e-mail messages whenever the digital transmitter is off the air, or if we find out that NBC is adding any HDTV shows to their schedule. If you (or anyone reading this) want to get on the distribution list, send a short message to hdtv@nbc15.com. The more the merrier...I'd love to show my boss how many people in southern Wisconsin can actually watch the local digital TV stations. We don't have a good way to gauge how many set-top boxes and integrated HDTV sets are out there.

And let us know what town you're in.

...E-mail offer not valid for anyone who is obviously way outside our coverage area...

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[Ron Pollitt]

This Tom Weeden is a real class act guy.  He is the WMTV Engineer (Channel 15 & Digital 19).  When I signed up for the E-Mail offer because I live in Fontana, he wrote back and asked how the reception was here.
When I asked about his stations power output, he responded:

"Our digital power is 21 kilowatts.  Our authorized power is 50 kW, but we have to wait for the other stations in our corporate group to even get on the air before we will be in line for a power increase.  So it will likely be at least another year."

It may not be what I wanted to hear but at least he was honest enough to provide the information and inquire as to his station's performance.

Sure wish he worked for a couple of the Milwaukee stations.

Ron