Just applied for HD waivers, wish me luck!

2743 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by Markman07, Aug 7, 2006

Fish Man

Discussion Starter · Nov 4, 2005

Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of the television transmitters in the New Orleans area.

Those channels who had their transmitters destroyed made a priority of getting an analog transmitter set up and running.

Right now, only the CBS affiliate has their digital transmitter operating. With a combination of good design and luck, they took the least damage to their transmitters (translation, virtually none).

Others were not so lucky.

The NBC affiliate lost both their analog and digital transmitters to flood waters (their transmitters were in St. Bernard Parish, where the Industrial Canal breach wiped out everything). They have NO TIMETABLE for getting them back on line. The PAX affiliate has taken over providing NBC programming to the New Orleans area. But only on analog, the PAX affiliate's digital transmitter is still transmitting PAX programming!!

In short CBS is the only one of the "big 4" networks in New Orleans with a digital transmitter operating.

I called each of the others and was told the following:

ABC: "It will be months [before we have a digital transmitter back on line]."

NBC: "Digital (and analog) down indefinitely."

FOX: "Mid to late 2006 before digital is back on line."

So, I called D* and, when the first CSR was being totally zoomed by what I was talking about, he transferred me to a "distant networks" specialist.

I told him that, for the fairly long future New Orleans has no digital NBC, ABC, and FOX affiliate! So, could I get those networks as HD distants?

He has applied for waivers for me.

The local affiliates would be quite the jerks to deny the wavers, since they have no HD for the foreseeable future!

This will be an interesting experiment.

Wish me luck!

See less See more

Save

1 - 7 of 7 Posts

Tricket

· #2 · Nov 4, 2005

Best of luck!

And, should the results come back negative ... I had excellent luck with e-mailing the stations who sent denials. The exception was our local (SF Bay) Fox, who sent a "we paid lots of money for this, and you're not getting a different HD feed!"

Save

Dssturbo1

· #3 · Nov 4, 2005

good luck but don't get your hopes up too much. might be easier to tell you "moved" to houston, dallas.

Save

Fish Man

Discussion Starter · #4 · Nov 4, 2005

Dssturbo1 said:
good luck but don't get your hopes up too much. might be easier to tell you "moved" to houston, dallas.

What good would that do?

D* doesn't have Houston or Dallas HD locals on the satellite.
To get HD distants in Houston or Dallas I'd have to get HD waivers from Houston or Dallas (which would be less likely to be granted because the local channels in those cities have their HD transmitters operating, unlike in New Orleans where they are down, for a fairly long time).
I'd lose my New Orleans SD locals because the Dallas / Houston spot beams do not reach New Orleans.

Actually, the best solution would be to "move" to a white area within the New Orleans DMA (although I'm not sure such a place exists, I think the entire DMA is "grade b" or better). That way, I'd get to keep my New Orleans SD locals and automatically qualify for (Digital) distants!

My hope is that my local affiliates will be reasonable. How can they deny me a waiver for some they don't even currently provide! Also, when they get their DT transmitters operating again, I'll happily watch them, but that could take a year!

See less See more

Save

Dssturbo1

· #5 · Nov 4, 2005

sorry didn't think about you losing the no locals.

meant that the dallas/houston hd waivers usually go quick since they have the O&O stations. might as well make it ny or la
the reason they don't have to grant anything is that that are not required to give you hd just sd. people get turned down with waivers all the time from stations that are not yet boradcasting hd.

Save