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[The High Plains Traveler]

The nexus of this topic is that we travel to other states, stay in hotels or (like me) RV parks, and watch TV. In some states, there continue to be independent local TV stations - not "independent" in the sense of network affiliation, but rather stations that broadcast from local studios, have local news personnel, etc. In other states, many of the original TV markets have been absorbed into larger markets from large metropolitan areas. While the local TV stations continue to broadcast, they operate as "satellites" of the big-city stations, mostly rebroadcasting their signal, and the best one can hope for is a breakaway from the 10:00 news to provide two minutes of local news or weather.

In other states, those small-town stations seem to be surviving. I actually thought of this topic during a recent visit to the northwest California coast, where we watched stations from tiny Eureka rather than, as I had anticipated, San Francisco. Last year, we stayed in the central coast area (Santa Maria/San Luis Obispo) and that area had local stations as well. I'm not aware of how many other local TV markets there are in California, other than L.A., San Diego, and San Francisco.

Here are some other observations from my travels.  Colorado, where I live, is dominated by the Denver TV market. This is even found in far southern Colorado, such as Salida and Alamosa. There are two other TV markets, though: Colorado Springs-Pueblo (my home area), which serves the sparsely populated southeast quadrant of the state, and Grand Junction. In contrast, New Mexico's former regional TV markets in Farmington, Roswell and Carlsbad have been absorbed by the Albuquerque market. The only exception is far southwest New Mexico, part of the El Paso market. Similarly, in Kansas, there is a small market around Topeka, and of course the area around Kansas City, but the rest of the state - even far western Kansas - is served by Wichita television. It's strange to sit in Dodge City, 200 miles west of Wichita, and be regaled with stories of the street crime at that distance. Also, the regional TV markets in southern and central Minnesota appear to be absorbed into the Minneapolis-St. Paul market.

How does this compare elsewhere?

[corco]

I enjoyed this when I lived in Laramie. We got all the Denver market stations, but also KLWY (Cheyenne/Fox) and KTWO (Casper/ABC), so we had two ABCs and two Foxes. We only got the Wyoming PBS though. This was nice because every once in a while the football broadcast on ABC varied between Colorado and Wyoming, and we had the ability to watch either affiliate.

[realjd]

Indiana does this somewhat. Some of the medium sized towns will have one local news affiliate but most of the stations come from a bigger city. Lafayette is a good example. They have a local CBS affiliate WLFI while also getting the Indy CBS affiliate and other networks from Indy.

I think here in the east, the markets are small enough that small cities don't need their own station as much as out west.

[vdeane]

St. Lawrence county NY's local public access station is Clarkson University's WCKN.  Though we aren't really a "local news station" aside from the community calendar, we did air a lot of village dissolution stuff and candidate conversations before the election.

[yanksfan6129]

In the western Finger Lakes, roughly equidistant between Rochester and Syracuse, I receive both the Rochester and Syracuse news channels.

[3467]

Downstate Illinois is still independant of Chicago ex most cable have WGN and have had it for decades.
Quad Cities is considered one of teh best local markets with lots of competition and local news. It has even had obits and pet of the week and city council news.
Peoria is more concentrated with only 2 outlets
Quincy is a tiny market but it does .not have the resoources of the larger Quad cities and thus fills with a lot of IL/Mo state stories and national repeats.
Ottumwa Iowa has an even tinier market and the last I knew did have local news on Channel 3 .
I can also confirm the small western MN markets have been absorbed into MN.

I miss predigital TV as well. I am in downstate Illinois and in the right weather I Had South Dakota come in once and frequently got Chicago. Anyone else every play with long distance reception?

[Takumi]

I miss the analog days too. I remember with the right weather before digital TV I could get the occasional Norfolk station. Nowadays even getting some Richmond stations (at work, where we have a demo TV) is next to impossible.

[allniter89]

I miss the analog days too. I remember with the right weather before digital TV I could get the occasional Norfolk station. Nowadays even getting some Richmond stations (at work, where we have a demo TV) is next to impossible.

In the analog days, I routinely picked up a station in Lafayette, LA, 350 miles to the west,
and also Montgomery, AL, 160 miles to the north.
IMHO digital sux, I'd much rather watch a snowy channel and try to fine tune it than deal with the pixalization/picture freeze crap on digital!

[corco]

Digital sucks. I lived in Tacoma when the changeover happened and had a DTV compatible antenna. Before the switch, I got stations cloudy but clear enough to watch. Afterwards I had no TV.

[The High Plains Traveler]

I miss the analog days too. I remember with the right weather before digital TV I could get the occasional Norfolk station. Nowadays even getting some Richmond stations (at work, where we have a demo TV) is next to impossible.
In the analog days, I routinely picked up a station in Lafayette, LA, 350 miles to the west,
and also Montgomery, AL, 160 miles to the north.

IMHO digital sux, I'd much rather watch a snowy channel and try to fine tune it than deal with the pixalization/picture freeze crap on digital!

I get my direct TV signals off Cheyenne Mountain behind Colorado Springs, about 25 air miles north but in clear weather I can see the tower lights. Nevertheless I've had trouble on some channels, especially in the period right after the analog-digital transition before some stations boosted their power. To answer the previous poster, I lived in Albuquerque before there was a channel 2, now their Fox channel, (though that's their analog identification and it could be anything now) and I swear I was able to identify a station from El Salvador one afternoon. That may sound improbable but listening to FM coming home from work earlier this year I had a station from Tuscaloosa AL push my local NPR station off its channel.

[okroads]

In McCurtain County, OK (the farthest SE corner), one gets local stations from Oklahoma City, Texarkana, Dallas, Ft. Smith, and Shreveport. McCurtain County is closer to Shreveport & Dallas than to Oklahoma City.

[huskeroadgeek]

In McCurtain County, OK (the farthest SE corner), one gets local stations from Oklahoma City, Texarkana, Dallas, Ft. Smith, and Shreveport. McCurtain County is closer to Shreveport & Dallas than to Oklahoma City.

Falls City, NE(SE corner of the state) is in a similar position. They get stations from Lincoln, Omaha, St. Joseph, Topeka and Kansas City.

[huskeroadgeek]

It's strange to sit in Dodge City, 200 miles west of Wichita, and be regaled with stories of the street crime at that distance.

The last time I was in Dodge City a few years ago, they still got a local weather insert and local commercials, at least on the CBS affiliate. They had their own logo bug in the corner of the screen too-a "6" in the same logo style as the "12" for KWCH in Wichita.

We have the same thing here in Nebraska. KOLN-TV Channel 10 in my home town of Lincoln has a satellite station KGIN-TV Channel 11 in Grand Island(the two stations are known on-air as "10/11"). The coverage area extends about 300 miles to the west from Lincoln. Covering all of that area is always interesting during severe weather season when there are constantly severe weather warnings for some part of the vast viewing area.

[huskeroadgeek]

I wonder if anybody else has ever experienced this on their travels. Sometimes motels will get their signals off of satellite rather than from the local cable system. This sometimes leads to them getting their network stations from a far away place rather than the local area. One time I was staying in a Motel 6 in Russellville, AR, and they got the 3 major network affiliates from 3 different very distant markets. the CBS affiliate was WCBS in New York, the ABC affiliate was WTVD in Durham, NC and the NBC affiliate was WXIA from Atlanta. Has anybody else ever seen anything like this?

[ghYHZ]

Our local US station in western New Brunswick was WAGM in Presque Isle, Maine. It was an affiliate of the three big networks with a mix of programming from ABC, NBC & CBS. The larger market was New Brunswick so a lot of the local news, weather, sports and advertising was Canadian orientated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAGM-TV

After we got cable, US stations carried were from Bangor then it switched to a package of all network stations from Boston and if you have “time shifting” you get all the networks out of Seattle too…….now I’m just as familiar with the anchors on KIRO as I am with my local CBC station. 

[vdeane]

My aunt and uncle have a similar situation.  They get Canadian channels over the air and need cable to get US channels.

[Stephane Dumas]

When my parents got cable in the early 1980s, my local cable company (now aquired by Videotron) carried ABC WMTW-8 fbefore they switched to the ABC affiliate in Burlington VT in 1995. We got a FOX in 1995 from a Rochester tv station before the creation of WFFF station.  We even got for a short moment, WDIV from Detroit via satellite until they improved the reception of WPTZ, the NBC station in Plattsburgh.

Also, over the years, CTV, Global and CBC, as well as the French networks Radio-Canada and TVA buyed local stations being recycled into a defacto re-emitters.  There not lots of differents of programming between tv stations of Montreal and Sherbrooke.

[PAHighways]

One time I was staying in a Motel 6 in Russellville, AR, and they got the 3 major network affiliates from 3 different very distant markets. the CBS affiliate was WCBS in New York, the ABC affiliate was WTVD in Durham, NC and the NBC affiliate was WXIA from Atlanta. Has anybody else ever seen anything like this?

I used to see it every night at home, as my parents had one of those 10' satellite dishes.  There was a programming package for those (and even DIRECTV in its infancy) called "Primetime 24" which carried affiliates from three large markets on a rotational basis in the Eastern/Central time zone, and WXIA-11 was the NBC affiliate in it at one time.  When Fox got the NFL in 1994, WFLD-32 Chicago was added to the package.

[D-Dey65]

I miss predigital TV as well. I am in downstate Illinois and in the right weather I Had South Dakota come in once and frequently got Chicago. Anyone else every play with long distance reception?

When I lived on Long Island, and my family wouldn't get Cable TV(which I really didn't mind), my family had TV signals from the Tri-State Area like everybody else, along with at least one other ABC affiliate; WTNH, Channel 8 in New Haven, Connecticut. However, I also used to get TV signals from Bridgeport, Connecticut, Waterbury, Connecticut, Hartford, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Providence Rhode Island, Atlantic City, a couple of places in Delaware, Salisbury, Maryland, and occasionaly Boston.

[hbelkins]

Somewhat on topic, this link redirects to a story in the Hazard (Ky.) Herald about the local CBS affiliate being unable to be carried on satellite TV.

http://tinyurl.com/85qg6wj

[webfil]

When my parents got cable in the early 1980s, my local cable company (now aquired by Videotron) carried ABC WMTW-8 fbefore they switched to the ABC affiliate in Burlington VT in 1995. We got a FOX in 1995 from a Rochester tv station before the creation of WFFF station.  We even got for a short moment, WDIV from Detroit via satellite until they improved the reception of WPTZ, the NBC station in Plattsburgh.

Also, over the years, CTV, Global and CBC, as well as the French networks Radio-Canada and TVA buyed local stations being recycled into a defacto re-emitters.  There not lots of differents of programming between tv stations of Montreal and Sherbrooke.

I used to live a bit East of Montréal and caught very clear signal from Trois-Rivières (most stations emit from a 1200-footer, one of the tallest antennas throughout the province), Sherbrooke, Burlington and Plattsburgh. Most of the Sherbrooke signals cannot be caught on Montréal island, although curiously from where i lived and eastward, the signal was ok.

That good reception made a diversified TV offer, with nearly all of the VHF channels occupied with very clear reception. I made a list in 2001-2003 (not sure) of these capturable channels, analog tv was still current. I wonder if that have changed since then. I know nothing at all about OTA digital television ; I lived in Québec city when USA switched to DT, so that did not affect tv reception. I since moved back to Montréal but i do not watch television anymore.

The offer in Québec was more restricted : 6 channels were available on the air, with some weak repeater signal.

Some very, very small markets (Carleton, pop. <5000, Rivière-du-Loup pop. <20 000, Rouyn-Noranda, pop. ~40 000) have network-affiliated TV stations.

Back when I made the present list, the major difference in programming between local networks were the news at 6PM and early sunday shows.

Channel - Callsign [Network], City of license (Location of the antenna)
2 - CBFT [Radio-Canada], Montréal (Mont Royal)
3 - WCAX [CBS], Burlington (Mount Mansfield)
5 - WPTZ [NBC], Plattsburg (Mount Mansfield)
6 - CBMT [CBC], Montréal (Mont Royal)
7 - CHLT [TVA], Sherbrooke (Mont Orford)
8 - CHEM [TVA], Trois-Rivières (Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel)
9 - CKSH [Radio-Canada], Sherbrooke (Mont Orford)
10 - CFTM [TVA], Montréal (Mont Royal)
12 - CFCF [CTV], Montréal (Mont Royal)
13 - CKTM [Radio-Canada], Trois-Rivières (Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel)
-------
17 - CIVM [Télé-Québec], Montréal (Mont Royal)
22 - WVNY [ABC], Burlington (Mount Mansfield)
{29 - CFTU [Canal Savoir], Montréal (Université de Montréal tower building)},weak signal
30 - CFKM [TQS], Trois-Rivières (Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel)
35 - CFJP [TQS], Montréal (Mont Royal)
44 - WFFF [Fox], Burlington (Mount Mansfield)
{45 - CIVC [Télé-Québec], Trois-Rivières (Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel)}, prior to a plane crashing in the old antenna
{46 - CKMI [Global], Montréal (Mont Royal)}, weak signal
57 - WCFE [PBS], Plattsburgh (Lyon Mountain)
{62 - CJNT, Montréal (Mont Royal)}, weak signal

[broadhurst04]

I miss the analog days too. I remember with the right weather before digital TV I could get the occasional Norfolk station. Nowadays even getting some Richmond stations (at work, where we have a demo TV) is next to impossible.

When I was growing up in North Carolina I could go to my grandmother's house (in Ashe County at the time) and pick up WRAL in Raleigh on her rooftop analog antenna if the conditions were right. At that point I was about 200 miles from the transmitter.

[broadhurst04]

I wonder if anybody else has ever experienced this on their travels. Sometimes motels will get their signals off of satellite rather than from the local cable system. This sometimes leads to them getting their network stations from a far away place rather than the local area. One time I was staying in a Motel 6 in Russellville, AR, and they got the 3 major network affiliates from 3 different very distant markets. the CBS affiliate was WCBS in New York, the ABC affiliate was WTVD in Durham, NC and the NBC affiliate was WXIA from Atlanta. Has anybody else ever seen anything like this?

I think that happened more frequently in the 1980s when home satellite dishes first went on the market. They used to be large free-standing dishes in the yard instead of being mounted on the house as they sometimes are now. If you subscribe to DirecTV or Dish you get the network affiliates that serve your county only.

[huskeroadgeek]

I wonder if anybody else has ever experienced this on their travels. Sometimes motels will get their signals off of satellite rather than from the local cable system. This sometimes leads to them getting their network stations from a far away place rather than the local area. One time I was staying in a Motel 6 in Russellville, AR, and they got the 3 major network affiliates from 3 different very distant markets. the CBS affiliate was WCBS in New York, the ABC affiliate was WTVD in Durham, NC and the NBC affiliate was WXIA from Atlanta. Has anybody else ever seen anything like this?

I think that happened more frequently in the 1980s when home satellite dishes first went on the market. They used to be large free-standing dishes in the yard instead of being mounted on the house as they sometimes are now. If you subscribe to DirecTV or Dish you get the network affiliates that serve your county only.

Yeah, the time I experienced this was in the early 90s, and with the DBS systems now that have local channel packages, I guess getting distant stations like that isn't quite as common, although some small markets still do not have local channel packages and get their network affiliates from either New York or Los Angeles depending on which part of the country they are in.
I also remember another interesting story about picking up distant stations on satellite that somebody else experienced. About 10 years ago some friends of mine from Nashville took a trip to the Cayman Islands and were surprised to find that their hotel carried American network TV channels. They were even more surprised to find out that the ABC affiliate they carried was WKRN from Nashville-which was the local station they watched for news, so they got to watch their local news while they were out of the country.

[allniter89]

Dish does offer a  "Superstation Package" that offers
WPIX & WWOR from NYC,
WGN from Chicago,
KTLA from LA,
KWGN from Denver  
WSBK from Boston.
I also get my local affiliates from nearby Pensacola (40miles) and Mobile, AL (100miles).