Hey,

OK, three questions on some topics...

1. Will stations such as WGRZ 2 be forced to change their information, so it will no longer be NBC 2 but now NBC 33, after the NTSC shutdown is complete?

2. Why would the FCC reject WUTV and WNYO application to revert to their analog station numbers once the shutdown is complete, especially since there is no conflict with -DT or -HDTV stations in that region on their analog, however for a station such as WNYO, by staying at their current position, it will actually cause a conflict?

3. Any word of CITS Crossroads, a) Plans to go OTA HDTV and b) Application Number Change?

These questions are too market-specific for me to have the answers, but I think in the case of your first question, that station will keep broadcasting on 33 and call itself WGRZ 2-1. Please note that this is already automatically supported by those satellite receivers that can receive OTA digital stations.

Seems that someone smart and commercial decided that public recognition of a station by its existing number, in this case 2, was more important than naming a station with its actual channel assignment number. The -1 was used to declare that it is a digital station, and maybe that will not be going away, even after all of the analog stations go away. We may have 2-1 forever, even when there is no 2, leading future beginners to ask, why is there a channel 2-1 but not a channel 2? For that matter, why is there no channel 1 (this is a story in itself and the answer can be found through google).

In the Los Angeles market, all of the digital stations are in the UHF band, and the only ones that name themselves with UHF numbers already were in UHF with their analog stations; these use the same numbers with a -1 et cetera.

The FCC rejected WHAT about the WUTV and WNYO application? Their permission to use thies analog station "numbers," implying frequency, or their analog station numbers plus -1? (Which would indeed seem mighty strange in light of what stations are doing nationwide).

Just a detail -- when you ask about CITS and say "HDTV," are you implying that all of their programming will be HDTV resolution, or are you being as sloppy as the rest of us have been for years, and you really mean "digital," which is to say they will broadcast a digital signal but might have 480i or 480p resolution to some of their programming? All of us in this industry have been so ga-ga over HDTV that we have accidentally misrepresented to our clients that everything in digital will be HD. Note the number of threads regarding how poor some digital channels look on some TVs, due entirely to the programming not being actual HD. If we had been more realistic, this would have been less of a reason for complaints.

"Accidentally misrepresented"?

I am talking more about the stuff over at remotecentral.com/hdtv , being that is the area I live in. The application for WNYO and WUTV to revert to their analog station numbers when the analog shutdown was complete had been rejected by the FCC, so WUTV 29 is going to stay on the 14 frequency and not revert to the 29 range.

I am being lazy like everyone, I ment digital (hoping that Daniel may know this one),

You are probably right in saying they will just remmap their station to the number they choose...\

I don't know the answer to WUTV and WNYO's rejection (interestingly both are owned by the same company). But if you go to the FCC's website under their channel election applications where they opted to use their "current" analog channels, both were "rejected" and now there's new applications to use the current digital channel assignments.

For WUTV it's not that big of a deal - assuming they eventually get their 1000kw going on 14 it won't be as strong as analog 29's 3980kw but still pretty good - but for WNYO their current assignment of channel 34 has a conflict with a future Canadian station and they're only allowed 650 watts broadcast power. Channel 49, where they wanted to return to, is currently authorized for 4,900,000 watts. So you can see that they're truly screwed.

Yeah, we have been so impressed with the idea of HDTV that we have been calling digital TV by the name HDTV from before there was more than about twenty minutes of HD programming. We represented that digital was equal to HD, when digital can be HD but can also be SD. And a year ago, a larger percentage of programming was SD, meaning a year ago this was even more true!

Accidental, because I don't think anyone who thought this way intended to mislead anyone, just got carried away with the best that was to come, not really pointing out that, yeah, most of what is on right now is standard definition, but just wait! And we are finally starting to be there.

What is the link to the FCC application for WNYO and WUTV?

Also, would there be any potential conflicts for WNYO and WUTV to be on their old analog stations? I really can't think the FCC would want potential conflicts with Canadian stations...

WUTV: [Link: svartifoss2.fcc.gov] (look for the one dated 06/23/2005 for the original application and the one dated 08/04/2005 for the re-application.)

WNYO: [Link: svartifoss2.fcc.gov] (look for the one dated 08/08/2005 for the original application and the one dated 08/11/2005 for the re-application.)