COVID-19

Dr Phil with SUNY Oswego alum Al Roker on the Today show, 2006.

With coronavirus the elephant in the room, all aspects of life are affected.  Shows with studio audiences like Dr Phil either have to close or tape without one (although reruns of his show are on OWN, other series that don't have to be current such as The Price is Right or soaps could go into their vaults).  Getting guests over would be a bit of a risk too on top of problems they may already have.  Like many people, I'm watching the news helplessly trying to cope with something unheard of before in living memory.  Meanwhile, Dish and Apollo/Cox have declared a truce ending their dispute as maybe other proviers and owners until after Easter as having people even tele-conferencing can be hard right now.  I'm ready to ask a psychic when any break will arrive.
Long-running shows in syndication could air reruns from recent past seasons if they go through this series' and can't make new episodes right now, but freshman shows will have the same episodes to go through sooner than usual.  We all hope all this will ease up someday.

TV in far-flung regions

Not strong enough for the countryside.

There are areas where the closest TV market can be more than fifty miles away, while some like Syracuse and Utica here in CNY, or Baltimore and Washington are within that much distance of each other. Where I used to live in the Mid-Hudson Valley, I was almost eighty miles from Albany and New York City. While much of the area was part of the tri-state viewing area, there was less of a voice for everyone north of Yonkers and south of Catskill. RNN in Kingston provided local news for the region, although they moved operations down the river. WMHT has a translator W42AE in Poughkeepsie which has DCC classes in place of other instructional programming during the day and week. You'd have to have cable or a strong antenna to get anything. Satellite was only starting to have broadcast channels more easily. Only major stories would get any attention.
Other remote areas are dotted throughout the country. Stations can't exist in every city if there aren't enough people to serve.

Replacements for Spectrum

Willimantic, CT office.

The honeymoon's over!  Albany is showing Spectrum the door.  After being slated for not living up to their promise, New York State is looking to get them out.  Another company will have to take over the rights as a whole or portions of the state affected by this move.  There are a number of providers that could reach the northeast:

Comcast (although they've been in the same boat, yet own networks like NBC and USA)
Altice Optimum (much of downstate has this which absorbed Cablevision)
Haefle Cable (for around Cortland and Ithaca as they have rural communities like Virgil)
Atlantic Broadband (the US division of Canadian cable company Cogeco)
Consolidated Fairpoint (more of a Midwestern company)

Smaller networks

The most elusive of them all.

In the past decade or so, new networks like ThisTV, Antenna TV and RTN have cropped up on DTV giving people more choice over the air.  Older generations recall being lucky to have three channels on the dial!  Now they can see the shows they grew up with on most of these netlets.  MeTV and Antenna TV have picked up rights to several classics.  Series shown had reruns aired in syndication and on cable in the past after their network run had ended (yet off-network repeats usually start after Series 4 when there are enough to pad out a cycle to avoid too much repetition in a short span of time).  Some have yet to even appear on DVD, BluRay or streaming (The Golden Girls for example are on a few cable stations and now Hulu, twenty-five years after the original series left NBC and twenty after terrestrial broadcast rights expired in the US).  Other chestnuts had not aired at all in years and are now available for a new generation to enjoy although the ratings for these fledgling networks may be bubbling under in the Nielsens as they are low priority next to the big boys today.
Only Albany, Syracuse (now on WONO 11.2), and Buffalo have a ThisTV affiliate Upstate at this time.  Watertown (45.3), Rochester (36.1), Binghamton (20.2), Elmira (39.2) and Plattsburgh (3.3) have space for it.  In my area, if the existing tiers won't expand for the other networks, a new one could open and could get the old CBS 5 studio in the city or the one for WCNY (PBS) in Galeville (Liverpool).
Decades, H&I, Justice, Newsnet, TBD (an actual network, not an undetermined one; currently in CNY and WNY), Movies! and CoziTV are now in the Syracuse DMA, while Escape, Cheddar, GetTV (on air for a time in CNY but now just on Dish with national feed), The Country Network, Localish,  The Works, Light TV (sister to ThisTV; owned by Byron Allen of Funny You Should Ask), MHz Worldview, Newsmax (also on cable and satellite), Quest, Retro, Rev'n, Stadium, WeatherNeation, World (formerly available through WCNY), and YouToo (which is even older than Fox) all also have yet to reach CNY airwaves, although some may be available on cable and satellite as even Fox had a national feed for small markets yet to catch up with the rest of the country with their own station as recently as over a decade ago, but now these poor mans versions of Nick at Nite/TV Land provide an alternative for those tired of todays headlines, reality shows and reboots yearning for a simpler time.  They do have something for the kids if not what I may have watched in my day to meet FCC E/I programming requirements, even if no one really watches at all.
TheCoolTV is down to just a couple stations despite playing more music videos than MTV, BET, VH1 and MuchMusic for that matter combined as late payment of royalties to station owners if not record companies in addition to people watching them online may as well shut the network down.  The Tube previously had the same thing but could also be seen on cable.  I remember The Box with a 900 number back in the '90s where my43 and AMG are today.
If these newbies have new series it might not work due to their low-man status on the totem pole.  Catalogue or library titles account for much of their budgets as far as royalties, rights and residuals.  Old or new there is more competition than ever in America yet only the front line networks get feedback at the water cooler the next business day as opposed to the old guard from when you used the tap.  Still it's good to have more choice when some parts of the world are lucky to even have the bare essentials.

The Future of TV: Learn How You Can Protect the Future of Free, Local Television and Keep the News, Emergency Information and HD Programs You Love

The Future of TV: Learn How You Can Protect the Future of Free, Local Television and Keep the News, Emergency Information and HD Programs You Love

TV listings then and now

Not the actual logo but I had the TV Quick one saved and decided to work with that.

TV Guide had launched back in 1953 when people were just starting to buy television sets here in the US.  Newspapers would have listings of their own.  Of course technology changed over the past three generations and counting and then some.  There would be more options and competition.  TV Guide would have a local edition for each cluster market (where I used to live would have one for the local cable system as it was between two markets yet was part of the big one).  The paper would have a poor mans version on Sunday (most still do though mine has been pared down in recent years) which listed what channels were offered in each town.  Many in the '90s provided codes for VCR+ remotes which eased programming the VCR which has now gone the way of the Telex machine thanks to DVD and DVR!  An obscure magazine called Happiness (a cheap cross between Guideposts and Readers Digest that used to be in the free section at the cornershop) even used to have truncated national monthly listings.  Large listings magazines geared towards satellite subscribers were available on newsstands.  On TV there was the Prevue Channel (later TV Guide Channel and now Pop), Zap2It or something else though digital receivers with interactive guides have made the older kind available only on non-digital standard lineups.  As for papers some may not have the listings during the week anymore with the decline of print media when most people can just go online anyway to see what's on.  A lot of them now aren't even in circulation all week long or you have to pick one up yourself like in my area.  Meanwhile, TV Guide about a decade back became a full size magazine and since then only have national listings for print and I stopped buying it as it was no longer what I grew up with, although the local bookshop used to have back issues but I doubt they do today due to a change in ownership and possible lack of interest.  Still Homer Simpson can remember when TV Guide was the few things he ever bothered reading!

Cable choices

De facto for most of Upstate and Downstate.

By FCC regulation there can only be one cable company per community though there are other methods to receive service.  However there are more ways nowadays with satellite (DirecTV and Dish) and wherever available Verizon FiOS.  In CNY you can even choose NewVisions over TWC although both have their offices in East Syracuse (local ones for national monopoly TWC).  In some areas though you'd be lucky to get the one, or even have an old school antenna on the roof (I still have mine).  Comcast are still looking into getting TWC so that can change things around too.  There used to be large satellite dishes and I've seen a couple in the county but I would think now you'd have to be rich to own one and the TV listings in the paper used to have coordinates listed for cable channels like Lifetime or USA (owned by Comcast now).  With carriage disputes popping up a lot in recent years (there was one with Cablevision as early as the late '80s over MSG which they later bought and spun off), if your favourite channel is gone for a while it makes you want to switch though the provider will say it just tells the channel you're settling for their rise though they all work out eventually.

Cable in Syracuse

The Enron of cable!

While the scope of cable TV in the US has changed over the decades, I decided to focus on my own backyard.  The earliest system I can remember Syracuse having is CableSystems (their old satellites remain at the Chimes Building downtown but may no longer even be operational).  In the suburbs there were NewChannels covering Onondaga County except Skaneateles, Jordan and Elbridge which were under whatever they may have had in Auburn (Newchannels and later TWC CNY's old headquarters in East Syracuse by Wegmans were just torn down).  CableSystems became Cooke Cable by the late '80s and the Adelphia by the mid-'90s which went down in scandal a decade later.  Time Warner Cable already absorbed Selectavision in Cazenovia, NewChannels and then Syracuse and much of Upstate New York north of the Catskills.  Comcast bought other Adelphia markets, though merging with TWC would have brought it all full circle.

Not so Big Cable

What would baby watch? (Rogers are a big one in Canada though)

In most small towns, it's not always the big boys running the cable junket despite its roots as CATV providing out of town stations to far flung places (especially in higher elevations).  Several regions of Upstate New York alone have indie service.  In Cazenovia there used to be Select-a-Vision but that was absorbed into Time Warner Cable.  South on NY 13 in Cortland County, while the city has TWC, within the zip code in the hamlet Virgil in the ski belt there, Spencer-based Haefele Cable, which I mentioned before covering some of the Finger Lakes and Twin Tiers, have the rights.  Southern Cayuga County Cablevision is based in Locke.  Mid-Hudson Cable south of Albany I just may have heard of before when I lived down the river some that now even offer a digital converter for older sets (I had MediaOne then which went the way of TCI one town down).  The Cleveland Show had one called Waterman Cable which is in a small town in Virginia called Stoolbend between Washington and Front Royal.  Even Ireland have a handful of small ones and a licence fee like the UK.  Back in the States there are over 800 mini-cable companies amidst the megas.  However there are still spots where you'd be lucky to sign up for DirecTV or Dish.  With the carriage disputes domino-ing nationwide the small cable companies like ImOn Communications in Cedar Rapids, IA just decide to let go (Viacom in ImOns case) rather than get into a David and Goliath type tug of war that their conglomerate counterparts can solve in a matter of days if not weeks.  Indies may sacrifice lower-rated yet A-list cable channels but fight for broadcast ones.  Even those in one-horse towns can find other ways.  ACA represent the interests of the mini-telecoms.

Identity crisis

The ABCs (Australia) studio in Sydney, NSW

I put a similar post on the sister blog so I'll put this here now.
ABC - Australia (pictured), the Philippines and USA
Fox - network and FNC which are related yet different in scope
BrightHouse - former US cable service HQ in CNY and UK retailer
Cablevision - NYC, Service Electric Cablevision in NE PA, Cooke CableVision (sold in 1992 to Adelphia), early name for Bright House, and Southern Cayuga County Cablevision in Upstate NY.
Time Warner - cable and conglomerate (ex-parent company of TWC)
NBC - USA, the Philippines and Namibia
Dish Network and Dish Nation
Yes - UK, US (sister to Fox) and Canada
Ghostbusters - Filmation and Sony (you get the idea)

Double trouble?

One of two Fox stations serving Cortland County

Many small towns and even states fall between two viewing markets but mainly belong to one.  Upstate New York has a few instances of straddling the proverbial fence.  I wish to open a Planet Fitness in Cortland which is 30 miles south of Syracuse but over 40 north of Binghamton.  I'll have several TVs in the gym as they all do so I would have two of them with Fox; Fox 68 from Onondaga County back home and Fox 40 from Broome County in the Twin Tiers (logo pictured).  I'd get both on TWC and I know who to call.  As you head towards the Finger Lakes wine belt and the PA state line, two small cable companies, Southern Cayuga County Cablevision (more on that later) and Haefele have the Elmira and Rochester markets featured along with mine but only so much overlap because of retrans fees (see petition).  It'd be too far to have an antenna in these small towns.
I lived in the mid-Hudson Valley for a period between Albany and New York but it's mainly the vast flagship tri-state market but the northern part has some of the Capital Region stations too.  The cable company I had then was Freeview compared to what they have now.  I used to be able to see a syndicated show on a local station and then on a then-indie superstation right after until SyndEx caused blackouts.  Not sure if something would be blacked out on one or the other as maybe the FCC makes exceptions for double dipping areas.  New Jersey isn't too big so they're split between NYC and Philadelphias lineups.  Once Jefferson and Oneida Counties get the stations I proposed earlier, either room could be made for them on TWC, or the CNY Central ones would have to go.  The pensioners will likely tell you they grew up with just three channels and a dial!

Cordcutting alternatives

No endorsement implied.

The recent blackout of Fox News and Fox Business from Dish that lingered for three and a half weeks left some subscribers either moving to another provider or if they're stuck in a contract plan B being going online to an unauthorised feed which appears to alternate between Cablevisions Optimum on Long Island, NY and Bright House Networks in Tampa Bay/St Petersburg, FL (although the company are based in my area).  Another one is out there but I only put them here as an example though those into cord-cutting apart from using Hulu and Netflix.  A briefer carriage dispute between my area local affiliates for FNCs sister networks Fox and myNetworkTV vs FiOS got me looking for another Fox station but more because the weather affected my DTV signal and I found Fox 45 from Dayton/Springfield, OH and flagship Fox 5 from the tri-state area.  However if you do ditch cable or satellite and live close enough to the transmitters then a good antenna is needed for local stations.  I have an old school one on the chimney so I only have to pay for Dish downstairs though Clear TV has had mixed reviews.  The posts on Utica and Watertown show that not all networks are easily available over the air in all areas though being able to find out of town stations can fill the vacuum there too but the varied nature of syndication (chat shows and reruns for a start) can add to the challenge when trying to do broadcast on a budget.  I've even been told by someone he was able to watch TV from the US and UK through a MMORPG online via XBox but I think I'll just keep Dish!

Cable Act Petition

What looks like INXS on this snap I happened to have.

I started a petition to change a generation-old law that is long overdue for a change.  Click, read and sign today!  I explain more there.