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Channel 4 turned into Channel None for many people today

By adamg on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 10:12pm

WBZ was having its issues this afternoon, or, as Barry Burbank put it:

Problems At The Transmitter! OUCH!

He added he's "highly confident" the problems will be fixed before the Patriots game tomorrow.

Topics: 
Media
Free tagging: 
WBZ


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Comments

By Toneye on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 11:16pm.

Out!

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By not in the dark on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 11:28pm.

Been trying to get Channel 4 all night.

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By Aeroguy on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 7:34am.

Normally, TV stations have redundant transmitters (electronics), so they can 'cut over' to the other when a failure occurs. However, the antenna and some of the cabling from the transmitters is not redundant. Be interesting to know what the problem was.

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By anon on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 9:02am.

RCN's channel 4 came back on around 8pm last night, but I missed the 'Bama game :(

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By theszak on Mon, 10/24/2016 - 9:32am.

The TV Channels 7 WHDH, 5 WCVB, 4 WBZ-TV, 2 WGBH, 25 WFXT, 38 WSBK, (43) 44.1 2.2 44.3 44.4 WGBX, 56 WLVI could be made available online!

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By dpalomares on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 9:47am.

But due to contract obligations they can't stream syndicated, sports and network programing.

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By theszak on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 10:24am.

A complexity that can be worked out benefiting all involved.

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By dpalomares on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 10:28am.

Networks stream their own programing and local news do place their videos on their website, the liklyhood of streaming 24/7 is not happening soon.

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By Irma la Douce on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 10:20am.

I've been unable to get 4, 5 or GBH 44 via antenna since last night.

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By anon on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 11:32am.

I thought it was the wind....

44.1 44.3, 44.4 are the best channels on television!

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By Irma la Douce on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 1:21pm.

Posters on the BZ twitter report some cable systems are also not receiving the station - including Worcester.

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By Will LaTulippe on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 6:05pm.

The WBZ feed on DirecTV appears to be the one from KDKA/Pittsburgh. I thought something was weird when I saw commercials at halftime for Pat Toomey and Giant Eagle.

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By David Plantz on Thu, 10/27/2016 - 7:32pm.

Dish Network used the same feed from KDKA/Pittsburgh. It was odd to see the Pittsburgh commercials. Once the prime time programming was over the feed was cut.

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By Ron Newman on Sun, 10/23/2016 - 8:21pm.

I don't know why channel 44 is affected since they aren't related to CBS or WBZ. I don't see anything on WGBH's website about a channel 44 outage. Anyone else having trouble with it?

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By cybah on Mon, 10/24/2016 - 7:42am.

They all use the same transmitting facility in Needham, which is owned and operated by CBS.

The transmission facility must have had a problem.

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By Ron Newman on Mon, 10/24/2016 - 3:25pm.

but today, Channel 2 seems to be out.

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By PeterGriffith5 on Mon, 10/24/2016 - 2:58pm.

Thank you CBS for saving myself from watching the endless, tedious commercials during each football game.

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By OTAViewer on Mon, 10/24/2016 - 6:10pm.

WBZ's over-the-air signal resumed this Monday evening, sometime between 3 and 5PM.
Checking, channels 5 (WCVB), 38 (WSBK) and 44 (WGBX) are back as well.

From what I could find out on avsform and freetvforme blogs, the American Tower "upper master" shared antenna feed at 350 Cedar Street, Needham failed, taking out channels 4, 5, 38 and 44.

WGBH-2 is on the "lower master" of the same antenna "stick", and was nominally unaffected by the failed upper master above them. The upper and lower master antennas are atop the tower, at about 1200' height.

After the failure, channel 5 switched to their backup transmitter and antenna, at the 700' level.

With some "musical chairs" of antennas & channels, GBH-2 was moved onto WCVB's backup antenna; this freed up the lower master to carry channels 4, 5, 38 and 44 again.

For radio adjacent-channel reasons, WGBH (RF Channel 19) and WCVB (RF Channel 20) must be on physically seperated antennas. If GBH and CVB tried to share a transmitting antenna, GBH's tranmsiited power would leak into CVB's transmitter, causing interference havoc.

The last time a similar failure occured, April 2012, leaking water within the Upper Master caused the failures.

Sources:

AVS forum Boston HDTV discussion:
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/45-local-hdtv-info-reception/28454-boston-...

freetvforme post with images of American Tower structure:
https://freetvforme.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/boston-broadcast-tv-outage/

bostonradio.org listserv discussion:
https://lists.bostonradio.org/pipermail/boston-radio-interest/2016-Octob...

The re-arrangement of stations is temporary, untiil CBS can get a replacement antenna built & flown in.

The down shifting of WGBH-RF19 to the 700' antenna will sacrifice viewers in the 20+mile ring beyond Needham.

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