Impact of WCMH sale?

[frenchophile]

Hey all

I read in today's dispatch that channel 4 will be sold by NBC/Universal to soe media group based in Virginia. Will this affect HD equipment at the station. Also, will people with D* no longer be able to receive national/NY feed via sat?

TP

[Scott]

Certainly will affect the national feeds from DirecTV. Once WCMH-DT is no longer O&O, DirecTV subs can kiss it goodbye.

[nicholc2]

Wonder if that will also mean goodbye to HD for TW subscribers. Think they will pull a Sinclair on them and we'll lose another local HD channel?

[Thombil]

I did a quick search on AVS and found some threads that say Media General does infact demand payment for carry of their digital signal on cable. The threads were somewhat dated (2005), so I don't know if things have changed, but it doesn't sound good.

[TvPat]

Don't forget network pre-empts. O&O stations have no financial incentive to pre-empt network programming, while affilites do. Anybody remember when WCMH used to show John Wayne movies on Saturday and Sunday afternoons instead of college basketball?

[nakedeye]

One good aspect on the other hand is going to be the bandwith should hopefully be freed up by the dropping of the stupid weather plus crap.


On the other hand, we REALY dont want to loose Shuan.

[mfletcher1]

Anyone hear anything further on the issue of whether the sale will result in TWC having to pay for the signal? When will the transfer actually occur?