Re: FOX WANTS A TV STATION IN THE SF BAY AREA
KeithE4 said:
There's nothing preventing a station from rejecting the analog number and using the digital RF channel as its PSIP instead. WOAY-TV in West Virginia decided to abandon its long-standing use of Channel 4 and went with a PSIP of 50.x, based on its RF channel. I think a station in Texas did the same thing several years ago.
Actually, there
is a rule preventing what you're describing from happening legally. The FCC's rules incorporate an entire ATSC standard that governs how digital TV is transmitted, and that standard (I want to say it's A/68, but I could be wrong) defines PSIP and the use of "major channel numbers."
In a nutshell: unless otherwise explicitly allowed to do so, a US full-power TV station must use its former analog channel number as its "major channel number" for its DTV signal. It may not arbitrarily switch to using its digital RF channel, or to another arbitrary major channel number.
In the case of KTVU, it cannot use "44" as its major channel number because KBCW must use 44. KBCW cannot use 45 because that channel would be reserved for a future user of RF channel 44 (though in this case that's moot, since KTVU is currently on 44). Without a clear standard that says "44" goes to KBCW and not to KTVU, there would be all sorts of conflicts the FCC would be loath to referee. KRON can't be "38" because of KCNS; KEMO in Santa Rosa can't be "32" because of KMTP; KTEH - er, KQEH - can't be "50" because of KEMO, and so on.
There are a handful of exceptions: two stations that are commonly owned can share a major channel number across multiple RF streams. If CBS wanted to, it could use "5.x" on KBCW as well as on KPIX, just as Cox could use "2.x" on KICU as well as KTVU. This is actually done in a few markets, but it can cause real-world problems with some receivers.
While it's not codified in the ATSC standard, stations whose analog channels are now out of core (above 51) are apparently nformally allowed to use their new RF channels as their major channel numbers if it won't cause any conflicts. WRLM in Canton, Ohio was analog channel 67 but is on RF 47 now, and it uses 47.x. WOAY appears to fall under this informal exception, though I suspect without the FCC's explicit blessing. (If someone were to get a new station on the air in Oak Hill on RF 4, the standard says it should use 50.x as its major channel, which would conflict with WOAY; the likelihood of this actually happening is nil.)
There's another more practical reason why stations shouldn't want to use their current RF channels as part of their branding: many, if not most, of those assignments will change in the next few years as the FCC again repacks the TV spectrum and pulls additional channels out of the core. Just because KTVU is on RF 44 now doesn't mean it will still be there in a few years - and for some Bay Area viewers, it already isn't on 44 anyway, since KTVU is one of several stations with "digital replacement translators" in the South Bay, where some viewers get it via RF 48. But they, like everyone else, get to continue to know KTVU as "channel 2."
The rules are a little more lax in the low-power rule. KAXT-CD in the South Bay is on RF 42, and would normally be expected to use "42.x" as its major channel, but it can't do that due to the potential conflict with KTNC from Concord. So it uses "1.x" as its major channel under special FCC dispensation.
