"fill-in" channels?

[moedog1]

Amazingly, Comporium Communications in York (and upper Lancaster) Counties in SC carries WSPA/7/CBS Spartanburg 100% blackout free, right in the shadow of WBTV/3/CBS in Charlotte.  Spartanburg is 70 plus miles away while Charlotte is as close as two miles from this system.  It blows my mind that WBTV has not put a stop to this (though I'm not complaining).  Comporium claims 63000 subscribers so this is not just a few homes and the channel placement runs like this:  WSOC(ABC)4, WBTV(CBS)5, WCNC(NBC)6, WSPA(CBS)7, WJZY(UPN)8, WTVI(PBS)9, etc.

[Whyzmaster954]

> Prime-time pre-emptions are a different story.  Stations
> have rarely completely pre-empted a prime-time show on a
> regular basis since the 1970s.  There are a few exceptions,
> of course, such as several ABC affils bumping "NYPD Blue"
> when it premiered, and a few network stations tried running
> the syndicated "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in
> prime-time when that show first came out.  Other than an
> occasional pre-emption for a regional sporting event or the
> occasional Billy Graham special, stations pretty much adhere
> to their network's prime-time schedule.  Then there's KSL-TV
> in Salt Lake City, but we all know about them.

I remember in Boston, our local ABC affilate, WCVB-TV preempted at first what ever ABC was showing on Friday nights at 9:30 in favor of "The Cosby Show" reruns and at the same time they pre-empted ABC's Sat 8:00pm sched for "Star Trek: TNG"

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[RFLA]

In my area, we are in the New Orleans DMA but the New orleans affliates do not complain about systems carrying other affliates outside of their 5 parish (county) metro area.

In the Bayou region (Houma,La about 50 miles SW of New Orleans) we have both all New Orleans affliates and the 4 to 5 full power TV stations (depending upon if they can recive the lower power but stull full power FOX affliate) from Baton Rouge (probably due to the fact that both can be recieved by outside TV antennas). To the west of my area, one of the cable systems actually carries the affliates from both cities plus Lafayette so you definitely won't have to worry about preemptions there:-) (3 ABC,3CBS,2 NBC,3FOX,2PBS)

In the past, When the NFC was on CBS and blackout rules weren't as stingy as they are now, the local cable system carried the CBS affliate from Lafayette (about 70 miles away) to carry Saints football.

But right now with most affliates in New Orleans on limited broadcast day mode or broadcasting news, It does help having an out of town affliate on the system to be able to get your mind on something other than "the storm"

RFLA

[Scott Fybush]

> I never heard of a "fill-in channel," but the next best
> thing back in the '70s was to have network affiliates all the time
> on cable from another market.  In Athens, GA, in addition to
> all the Atlanta stations except PBS Channel 30, we had three
> networks from Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville, and two (ABC and CBS)
> from Augusta.

This was one of the first selling points for cable in Rochester when it started up in the late 70s. When we got cable in January 1980, it carried all of the "big 3" from Buffalo, plus NBC (WSYR-TV, then) from Syracuse.

(At various times over the ensuing decade, we also got 5, 9 and 11 from New York, CJOH Ottawa via its Deseronto channel 6 relay transmitter, CBLFT-25 from Toronto, and even WSBK Boston for a time.)

When they pulled the last of the Buffalo signals off cable - I want to say this was about 1985 - they promised a "Potpourri" channel that would carry the local newscasts and other locally pre-empted programming from those signals. It never happened, probably for the retrans-consent issues that would now prevent the cable company from carrying any of those channels.

As soon as you cross the line out of Monroe County in either direction, the cable systems start carrying Buffalo and Syracuse signals, and now with a rooftop antenna and a DTV tuner, I get cleaner pictures on most of them then I ever did in the days when the cable company was picking them off the air from 60 miles out.

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[Adam C.]

> a few ABC affiliates still
> delay "Nightline" and/or "Jimmy Kimmel Live," but ABC
> probably has more "live" late-night clearances now than it
> ever has; and there still might be a few NBC stations
> delaying Conan and Carson Daly.

ABC O&O WLS-TV Chicago runs Nightline live but delays Jimmy Kimmel until after a re-run of Oprah.

-A

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