Friday, June 12, 2009

Almost Done

At this writing, the end of full-power analog TV in Northeast Ohio is nearly complete.

Only the analog signals of WKYC/3 (NBC), WVIZ/25 (PBS), WNEO/49 (PBS) and WQHS/61 (Univision) remain, and the last three will be gone before midnight tonight. WKYC's "nightlight" DTV information loop will continue through June 26th...the station having taken all entertainment and news programming off of analog 3 at 10 AM.

Over in the Mahoning Valley, only the analog signal of WFMJ/21 (NBC) is still on the air late this Friday night. It plans to pull the analog plug at just before midnight tonight, and will have to do so even if the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings take over four hours to finish Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

By the way, OMW hears from our friends at Western Reserve PBS that though Youngstown low-power analog fill-in translator W58AM (Channel 58) is indeed still off the air, the Kent-based PBS operation is planning to return the Youngstown fill-in service via digital channel 44 (58's replacement, W44CR) in the fall of this year.

We'll have a post-mortem and commentary over the weekend, and more information about other Ohio markets (particularly Toledo and Columbus) as it becomes available to us...

4 comments:

  1. The last station to shut off, WLWT-TV, will do so right at 1 minute to midnight. I'll let you know what happens...

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  2. Wow this is perfect! Turn WVIZ analog into an oldies music channel with a slide saying that we're killing analog.

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  3. OK so maybe it's not all oldies...

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  4. Down here in Columbus;

    WCMH 4 stopped their slide at 11:57 pm and signed off with a photo collage of various transmitters, master controls, photos of various RWB broadasts, studio sets... then pulled their analog transmission..

    WSYX 6 countdown ended at 11:58 during sinfield in the commerical break switched to the Spanish version of the 'nightlight NAB DVD'

    WBNS 10 had one final 11pm news cast at 11:00 then went to a slide at 11:35 stating analog broadcasting would be ending at 12midnight...

    at 11:57 they went to black then transmitter went off at 11:59

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