Worst TV stations ever

[IM42A]

Sinclair just wanted to use KENV to launch TBD on satellite in the Salt Lake City tv market via must carry.

I wouldn't have thought of that. But how are they able to get a signal from KENV to the satellite uplink centers in SLC? It's 200 miles as the crow flies from Elko to SLC.

Please tell me they don't use dedicated fiber. That would be a massive investment (or would it?) to place a diginet on satellite. What kind of ratings and viewership does TBD have anyway? Looking at their programming, it's just one step up from AMG TV.

 

[bpatrick]

I used to pick up the Central Virginia TV Guide at a convenience store located between my house and Chapel Hill. I have a map of TV Guide editions from 1978 and it shows Alamance County (next door to Chatham, where I live) getting the Central Virginia edition (Chatham got the North Carolina edition). The Triad and Triangle stations in the Central Virginia edition are all viewable in Alamance County, and I've gotten a decent signal for WDBJ and WSLS in Burlington.

About twenty years ago I spent the night in Beckley, WV, and all the Charleston/Huntington stations were carried there.

And re WYMT: some people call it "the little station that could," because everything about it was a disaster at one time and now does a decent job of covering southeastern Kentucky.

 

[IM42A]

I used to pick up the Central Virginia TV Guide at a convenience store located between my house and Chapel Hill. I have a map of TV Guide editions from 1978 and it shows Alamance County (next door to Chatham, where I live) getting the Central Virginia edition (Chatham got the North Carolina edition). The Triad and Triangle stations in the Central Virginia edition are all viewable in Alamance County, and I've gotten a decent signal for WDBJ and WSLS in Burlington.

About twenty years ago I spent the night in Beckley, WV, and all the Charleston/Huntington stations were carried there.

And re WYMT: some people call it "the little station that could," because everything about it was a disaster at one time and now does a decent job of covering southeastern Kentucky.

Indeed WYMT does. It's probably one of the finer small-town TV news operations in the US. Of course, they have WKYT's resources to draw upon, as well as Gray's, so it's not as though they're trying to do it all on their own. But they do an outstanding job, a real class act. WVVA in Bluefield WV, also Gray, is similarly excellent.

IIRC, in 2019 when I was there, only WSAZ and WCHS were carried on Beckley cable. If I had to guess, I would say that WVNS (Nexstar) has as part of their retransmission agreement "you can't carry WOWK, we want people in the BBOH market watching us and only us for CBS, and you also can't carry WVAH, as we want WVNS-59.2 to be the Fox station for this market as well, no competition". WOWK is also Nexstar, but I'd say they don't want their local product to suffer from people watching WOWK instead of WVNS, as would have been people's viewing habit prior to WVNS.

Just guessing, and assuming that local stations can make something like that part of their retransmission agreement.

 

[IM42A]

I used to pick up the Central Virginia TV Guide at a convenience store located between my house and Chapel Hill. I have a map of TV Guide editions from 1978 and it shows Alamance County (next door to Chatham, where I live) getting the Central Virginia edition (Chatham got the North Carolina edition). The Triad and Triangle stations in the Central Virginia edition are all viewable in Alamance County, and I've gotten a decent signal for WDBJ and WSLS in Burlington.

About twenty years ago I spent the night in Beckley, WV, and all the Charleston/Huntington stations were carried there.

And re WYMT: some people call it "the little station that could," because everything about it was a disaster at one time and now does a decent job of covering southeastern Kentucky.

The Central Virginia TVG had that weird little jut down between the Triad and Triangle markets, including Alamance County, which I'm assuming was to provide readers with listings for all major Triad, Triangle, and Roanoke stations. They also carried WSVA/WHSV from Harrisonburg, and their circulation area went up as far north as Pendleton County WV, where Roanoke 7/10 were carried on cable "back in the day" along with WSVA/WHSV. IIRC they later started selling the Eastern Virginia TVG, which also carried WHSV (but not Roanoke), and at one point they switched to the Washington-Baltimore edition. The clerk at the supermarket in Franklin told me they'd gotten several complaints about carrying the W-B TVG, as it didn't contain listings for WHSV. Viewers in Pendleton County consider WHSV to be their "local" station, though that huge mountain between Harrisonburg and Franklin makes traveling US 33 not for the faint of heart. Getting in the car and heading to Harrisonburg for a movie or to go to Walmart or Best Buy isn't just a matter of cruising a few miles into town on a smooth, flat highway on a moment's notice. Pendleton County is about as isolated as it is possible to be on the east coast of the United States. Petersburg in nearby Grant County is their "big city".

 

[IM42A]

The Central Virginia TVG had that weird little jut down between the Triad and Triangle markets, including Alamance County, which I'm assuming was to provide readers with listings for all major Triad, Triangle, and Roanoke stations. They also carried WSVA/WHSV from Harrisonburg, and their circulation area went up as far north as Pendleton County WV, where Roanoke 7/10 were carried on cable "back in the day" along with WSVA/WHSV. IIRC they later started selling the Eastern Virginia TVG, which also carried WHSV (but not Roanoke), and at one point they switched to the Washington-Baltimore edition. The clerk at the supermarket in Franklin told me they'd gotten several complaints about carrying the W-B TVG, as it didn't contain listings for WHSV. Viewers in Pendleton County consider WHSV to be their "local" station, though that huge mountain between Harrisonburg and Franklin makes traveling US 33 not for the faint of heart. Getting in the car and heading to Harrisonburg for a movie or to go to Walmart or Best Buy isn't just a matter of cruising a few miles into town on a smooth, flat highway on a moment's notice. Pendleton County is about as isolated as it is possible to be on the east coast of the United States. Petersburg in nearby Grant County is their "big city".

The hour was up, so I couldn't edit this, but substituting Eastern Virginia for Central Virginia might have been to provide listings for WTTG and WDCA, as well as WVIR from Charlottesville, which might have had fringe reception in that area. Not sure whether the Central Virginia TVG carried WTTG and WDCA.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Here's one WBTR-TV changes the lyrics to Hey 19 Steely Dan Song for their station ID.

Here's the original version.

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

The hour was up, so I couldn't edit this, but substituting Eastern Virginia for Central Virginia might have been to provide listings for WTTG and WDCA, as well as WVIR from Charlottesville, which might have had fringe reception in that area. Not sure whether the Central Virginia TVG carried WTTG and WDCA.

The Central VA edition carried both WTTG and WDCA in the '80s. At some point in the mid-'90s, WTTG was dropped; I'll assume it was around the time channels 21 and 27 merged.

 

[IM42A]

The Central VA edition carried both WTTG and WDCA in the '80s. At some point in the mid-'90s, WTTG was dropped; I'll assume it was around the time channels 21 and 27 merged.

After Fox came into being, and stations in more and more cities along the East Coast became Fox affiliates, there was less and less of a reason for cable companies to carry WTTG. Being able to get news throughout the day from DC would have been about the only plus.

Also, markets such as Harrisonburg and Charlottesville, once the home of single stations affiliated with one network (or, in the case of WSVA in the early days, cherry-picking shows from various networks, relayed OTA from DC), eventually became full-network markets, by dint of adding subchannels, LPTVs, and in the case of Charlottesville, gaining a full-power primary CBS affiliate in WCAV. Digital TV with its subchannel capability has made getting a network affiliate from an adjacent market pretty much a thing of the past (but then there's Parkersburg WV which lacks ABC, for now at least, and Presque Isle ME which still gets ABC from Bangor). Gray's being able to snap up LPTVs and repurpose them into network affiliates, sister stations of their main properties, has helped too. They've got it down to a science.

 

[RADIONUT1984]

The story of WYVN Martinsburg WV is a sad one. They started out as a Fox station, but had all sorts of financial and technical difficulties from the get-go. Here's the story:

https://www.radiodiscussions.com/th...60-martinsburg-wv-winchester-va-12-93.567518/

And this from Wikipedia:

WWPX-TV - Wikipedia

A Hagerstown-Martinsburg-Winchester market would have made sense --- it's just a little too far from Washington and Baltimore for good OTA reception without taking heroic measures such as high-gain antennas and high towers --- but I have to think that the DC and Harrisonburg markets would have had issues with fairly large pieces of their market being nibbled off, and aside from local news (and not even then, when the local news is nonexistent or of low quality), viewers often tend to prefer stations from larger and more cosmopolitan markets (which wouldn't have been an issue where Harrisonburg is concerned, but what the hay?).

In its incarnation as Ion affiliate WWPX, the station probably finds its highest and best use of a valuable high-VHF (OTA 13) frequency, but it's interesting to consider what a robust Shenandoah Valley TV market, with what in the digital era could entail all of the major networks on subchannels, could have looked like. For a time in (IIRC) the 1980s, Hagerstown was actually a single-county, single-station (WHAG) free-standing market, but that wasn't bound to last long, as aside from local news (they did their best and met a local need), there was no way WHAG could compete with WRC and WMAR (and later WBAL). And when Washington County MD was reabsorbed back into the DC market, NBC wasn't about to put up with a secondary affiliate on the western fringes of its market. Look at what happened to WMGM and KENV in the Philadelphia and Salt Lake City markets respectively --- the latter was a serious loss for Elko County viewers, as that was their only way of having local news, SLC stations aren't going to cover anything in Elko. A remote station in a rural area. such as KENV, having TBD as their network affiliation, without local news that they can't possibly sustain financially, is about as useless as vestigial mammary glands on a boar hog. Total waste of spectrum.

Local stations in remote areas are at their best advantage when they can work out something with a larger co-owned station in their market, to take advantage of their resources and branding, to produce a quality local news product. No station exemplifies this better than WYMT Hazard KY, which is a semi-satellite of WKYT Lexington, and produces a high-caliber local news broadcast using both their own resources and those of WKYT (as well as simulcasting WKYT news in certain dayparts), the end result being that rural Eastern Kentucky has some of the best small-town local news coverage in the United States. The area is historically in economically (as well as geographically) challenging conditions, and benefits greatly from this.

Well I got a repeat problem once again in wichita falls tx lawton ok TEXOMA market, only a good SIX months after me moving back to wichita falls from Fort worth two unrelated stations along with their subchannels have temporarily ate the pavement like Panama jack, for a week and a half KJTL 18.1 TEXOMA'S FOX [ a.k.a. i.e. FOX 18 ] and it's subchannels [ 18.2 grit, 18.3 BOUncE tv, 18.4 ion mystery] have been off the air other than via YouTube TV, Hulu, and spectrum. And since Sunday may 5 2024 the same PRECISE DISTINCT problem with KAUZ 6.1 CBS " NEWS CHANNEL 6 " AND their subchannels [ 6.2 the CW, 6.3 ION TV, 6.4 NEWS CHANNEL 6 24/7, 6.5 court tv, and 6.6 defy ]. The TWIST here is nexstar media group and mission broadcasting Inc own KJTL FOX [ in the same building with KFDX NBC AND KJBO MY NETWORK TV since 1999] and one has nothing to do with the other because KAUZ cbs news channel 6 is owned by GRAY TELEVISION AND American spirit media. Additionally KSWO ABC 7 lawton Oklahoma is coming in real weak, and problems picking up pbs KERA dallas tx, OETA Oklahoma, CFNT wichita falls lp familynet/cbn, and KJBO used to be UPN. so at this point the only channels I get are KFDX 3.1 NBC, 3.2 KJBO, 3.3 LAFF, AND 3.4 ANTENNA TV.

 

[RADIONUT1984]

The REASON KJTL is temporarily off the air is because of severe storms even a couple of TORNADOES in the area and the KJTL transmitter is all the way in grandfield Oklahoma, that was kind of stupid because most OF Oklahoma is known for very bad storms and TORNADOES. Even though it stormed very bad the night KAUZ went temporarily off the air still no word on why it happened or even any acknowledgement that it happened. But around here KAUZ is a joke.

 

[Sammi Brie]

Sinclair just wanted to use KENV to launch TBD on satellite in the Salt Lake City tv market via must carry.

They didn't see the need to do it when KTVN (and KOLO) were brought into the area in question by the translator system. KENV was a Jim Rogers special in every sense of the word. It survived as long as it did—it outlived Jim Rogers—because he secured a 17-year affiliation agreement for his stations with NBC. That is not a typo. The entire Sunbelt/IWCC group was covered by this agreement, and he was an NBC man through and through. When KTVH in Helena, Montana, went up for sale in 1997, Rogers used the threat of having NBC move its affiliation to an unbuilt VHF CP he owned to successfully scare away the buyer. KSL management didn't realize KENV existed until about 2013 or 2014, when they were contacting MVPDs in the market, and opted to wait out the super-long affiliation agreement.

My contribution to this thread would have to be KDCD-TV 18 Midland, Texas. This UHF television obscurity, which was a struggle to write about, briefly blinked on for a month in early 1962 and then longer stints from 1969–71 and 1973–74. It was beset by ownership problems, a lack of network affiliation, and chiefly its wimpy facilities. The station only reached Midland. That was not going to work well. (This ancient 2006 thread has some personal recollections.) The construction permit almost made it to a revival in the 1980s, too. The most notable thing it did was set a snowball rolling that led to Grayson Enterprises having to distress-sell its Texas TV stations.

A bit more forgivable was KFXD-TV 6 Nampa, Idaho. It was Idaho's first television station, but it quite frankly was barely a station at all. Its story screams "radio men not knowing what to do in TV". The far more organized KIDO-TV (now KTVB) turned up in its brief stay on air. KFXD-TV was the first VHF station to fold, and though the CP lingered under new ownership, the holders didn't feel like Boise could sustain three local stations.

 

[IM42A]

They didn't see the need to do it when KTVN (and KOLO) were brought into the area in question by the translator system. KENV was a Jim Rogers special in every sense of the word. It survived as long as it did—it outlived Jim Rogers—because he secured a 17-year affiliation agreement for his stations with NBC. That is not a typo. The entire Sunbelt/IWCC group was covered by this agreement, and he was an NBC man through and through. When KTVH in Helena, Montana, went up for sale in 1997, Rogers used the threat of having NBC move its affiliation to an unbuilt VHF CP he owned to successfully scare away the buyer. KSL management didn't realize KENV existed until about 2013 or 2014, when they were contacting MVPDs in the market, and opted to wait out the super-long affiliation agreement.

My contribution to this thread would have to be KDCD-TV 18 Midland, Texas. This UHF television obscurity, which was a struggle to write about, briefly blinked on for a month in early 1962 and then longer stints from 1969–71 and 1973–74. It was beset by ownership problems, a lack of network affiliation, and chiefly its wimpy facilities. The station only reached Midland. That was not going to work well. (This ancient 2006 thread has some personal recollections.) The construction permit almost made it to a revival in the 1980s, too. The most notable thing it did was set a snowball rolling that led to Grayson Enterprises having to distress-sell its Texas TV stations.

A bit more forgivable was KFXD-TV 6 Nampa, Idaho. It was Idaho's first television station, but it quite frankly was barely a station at all. Its story screams "radio men not knowing what to do in TV". The far more organized KIDO-TV (now KTVB) turned up in its brief stay on air. KFXD-TV was the first VHF station to fold, and though the CP lingered under new ownership, the holders didn't feel like Boise could sustain three local stations.

I guess they were being upfront, but it's hard for me to see how KSL could not have been aware of the existence of another NBC affiliate in their market. They may have thought it was a translator (which it kind of was, though a full-powered one with local news cut-ins). They could always have bought it and operated it as a semi-satellite of KSL, allowing local news for an hour a day (30 minutes at 6 pm and 30 minutes at 11 pm), though running an SLC satellite in the Pacific Time Zone would have been kind of weird (but no weirder than having their own programming on Elko County cable).

Your account of KDCD reminds me of KSLN (channel 34) Salina KS in the early 1960s, which was an ABC affiliate running 724 watts (what the... ???) and barely got out of Salina proper, let alone Saline County. They didn't last long.

 

[IM42A]

They didn't see the need to do it when KTVN (and KOLO) were brought into the area in question by the translator system. KENV was a Jim Rogers special in every sense of the word. It survived as long as it did—it outlived Jim Rogers—because he secured a 17-year affiliation agreement for his stations with NBC. That is not a typo. The entire Sunbelt/IWCC group was covered by this agreement, and he was an NBC man through and through. When KTVH in Helena, Montana, went up for sale in 1997, Rogers used the threat of having NBC move its affiliation to an unbuilt VHF CP he owned to successfully scare away the buyer. KSL management didn't realize KENV existed until about 2013 or 2014, when they were contacting MVPDs in the market, and opted to wait out the super-long affiliation agreement.

Was that by any chance KOUS-4 in Hardin, later to become KHMT? I know they're two separate markets, but the way they were able to cobble together markets that aren't naturally occurring back in the day, and Helena being such a minuscule market to begin with, anything's possible. You need look no further than how the Greenville-Spartanburg and Asheville markets were combined, WLOS would have made as much sense as the ABC affiliate for Bristol-Kingsport-Johnson City (which it really was, until WKPT went on the air) as it does for Greenville-Spartanburg, and even though this is no longer the case, and great distances weren't involved, KNTV San Jose (ABC) was part of the Salinas-Monterey market even though San Jose actually lay outside that market. KGO was never happy with having another ABC affiliate that close by in the first place.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

After Fox came into being, and stations in more and more cities along the East Coast became Fox affiliates, there was less and less of a reason for cable companies to carry WTTG. Being able to get news throughout the day from DC would have been about the only plus.

Yes and in some areas there was a "FoxNet" it was a direct network feed from Fox it at one time carried syndicated programming at non-primetime hours. This may explain why some parts of the country at one point didn't have a local Fox affiliate and its tied to the FoxNet feed or they were allowed to access Fox owned stations like KTTV in Santa Barbara and Palm Springs or like this one with WTTG.

Foxnet - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[newsmark]

I wouldn't have thought of that. But how are they able to get a signal from KENV to the satellite uplink centers in SLC? It's 200 miles as the crow flies from Elko to SLC.

Please tell me they don't use dedicated fiber. That would be a massive investment (or would it?) to place a diginet on satellite. What kind of ratings and viewership does TBD have anyway? Looking at their programming, it's just one step up from AMG TV.

KENV is not on Cable or Satellite in Salt Lake City.

 

[IM42A]

KENV is not on Cable or Satellite in Salt Lake City.

Perhaps they haven't pressed the matter, as on one hand, they are an SLC in-market station, and could demand must-carry (at least on cable), but OTOH, they'd be unable to deliver a usable signal to any head end beyond Wendover (and that's probably being generous), nor to the uplink facility for the SLC market. Wouldn't be worth anyone's while.

KENV is just a glorified satellator. Sad waste of spectrum and someone's money, and in the meantime, Elko loses local TV news.

 

[Sammi Brie]

Your account of KDCD reminds me of KSLN (channel 34) Salina KS in the early 1960s, which was an ABC affiliate running 724 watts (what the... ???) and barely got out of Salina proper, let alone Saline County. They didn't last long.

That's what KDCD-TV reminded me of as well, actually, having written that Wikipedia article. The extremely low ERP was just a total miscalculation. There's also the very short-lived KCDA Douglas, AZ (channel 3), which operated in 1961. It was owned by the Electron Corporation, whose claim to fame was cheap small-town TV station equipment. Local newspaper is not available to confirm much about them, but that may explain something indeed.

Was that by any chance KOUS-4 in Hardin, later to become KHMT? I know they're two separate markets, but the way they were able to cobble together markets that aren't naturally occurring back in the day, and Helena being such a minuscule market to begin with, anything's possible.

Channel 10, which had been allocated to Helena since day one but remained unbuilt. Meridian Communications of Montana, which was related to Sunbelt, held the CP. It went on air as a Fox affiliate with separate ownership and management but from the same building Sunbelt built for KTVH.

 

[ftballfan]

WDHS in Iron Mountain, MI never broadcast consistently AFAIK despite being licensed for 20+ years. It would have made a great simulcast facility for any of the other Marquette-area TV stations (especially WBKP in the Keweenaw Peninsula, which gave the Marquette DMA an in-market Big Three for the first time ever despite its OTA signal not reaching Marquette itself)