Channel 41 in Chicago, R.I.P.

[ajk]

Saw in the newspaper the other day that our local channel 41, which used to carry our Korean programming, is no longer a broadcast television frequency.

A while back the FCC reassigned the higher part of the TV frequency spectrum for wireless mobile devices. Six of our local stations with higher channel numbers (like WPWR-50, channel 41, and the local Univision and Telemundo stations) were told to move to lower frequencies. An auction was held to sell their frequencies to new owners and the broadcasters received the proceeds. I'm not an electrical engineer but I think the idea is that with the ability to broadcast on digital subchannels these days, more stations can fit into a smaller part of the spectrum than when all of the signals were analog. So as the article below explains, those six broadcasters needed to make deals with lower-frequency channels to "channel-share" if they wanted to continue broadcasting. Most of them have done so but the owners of channel 41 decided to just pull the plug and walk away.

The owners of 41 are an outfit out of Texas called NRJ-TV, LLC that's backed by one of the big New York investment firms. It's not a serious broadcaster; it exists to buy and sell frequencies around the country as investments. Not sure how much they paid to buy 41 or how much it ended up selling for.

Our veteran members here will remember that our local Korean broadcaster KBC moved to 41 from channel 28 in 2005. (28 was interfering with the signal of a Milwaukee station so it had to be vacated.) In 2014 KBC moved on to the 13.2 digital subchannel where we see it today, apparently in anticipation of all this. At the time the plug was pulled, 41 was airing a low-budget sci-fi rerun network called Comet, which now airs locally on 22.4 in case anybody's looking for it.

So none of this is putting anybody out of business; it's just to make more efficient use of the spectrum for today's needs. But I thought I'd post this here just to have it permanently in the forum as a historical record. 28 and 41 were important numbers here for a long time! Farewell to both.


p.s. Correction: This was voluntary, not mandatory. The six stations chose to enter the auction.

[ajk]

Here's the newspaper article that reported on what's been happening. The real shocker here is that the City Colleges PBS station WYCC on channel 20 might be shutting down. That's a terrific little station and would be a big loss. Hope they can work things out and stay on the air.


Chicago PBS station WYCC hoping to stay on the air through deal with WTTW

By Robert Channick
Chicago Tribune - September 22, 2017

On the brink of signing off after 34 years as Chicago’s “other” public TV station, WYCC-Ch. 20 may have found a way to stay on the air.

The PBS affiliate, which is owned by City Colleges of Chicago, said Friday that it is exploring a deal to share a channel with WTTW-Ch. 11, allowing it to continue broadcasting after agreeing to vacate its own frequency in a Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction.

“CCC was recently approached by WTTW, a Chicago PBS affiliate, about the possibility of entering a channel-sharing agreement,” Katheryn Hayes, a City Colleges spokeswoman said. “CCC is exploring this opportunity, which will need to be approved by its board of trustees.”

Julia Maish, a WTTW spokeswoman, confirmed Friday that the stations are in discussions but said “there are no firm agreements yet.”

WYCC received $15.9 million in the auction, which shifted a chunk of the broadcast airwaves for wireless mobile use. It was one of six Chicago-area TV stations, including Fox-owned WPWR-Ch. 50, NBC's Telemundo outlet WSNS-Ch. 44 and Univision’s WXFT-Ch. 60, to sell their broadcast frequencies.

The “winning” stations had the option to channel-share with another TV station or go off the air, with Jan. 23 the deadline for those pulling the plug.

WYCC sent a letter to its members Sept. 13 informing them the station would be going off the air for good next month.

“The letter said we were going to cease broadcasting services as of Oct. 25,” Hayes said. “We will be following up with a new letter.”

Launched in 1983 with a dormant UHF license acquired by City Colleges, WYCC offered television courses to students and a public broadcasting alternative to the much larger WTTW. In addition to airing PBS content, WYCC produces local programming, such as “In The Loop,” a weekly public affairs show that launched in 2013.

WYCC had a staff of 26 and an annual budget of nearly $8.2 million last year, according to public filings, with City Colleges providing more than $5.7 million of the funding. Grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the state of Illinois and private donors were also part of the station’s nonoperating revenue, but it still lost nearly $732,000 last year.

Nationwide, 175 broadcasters sold their licensed frequencies, freeing up 70 megahertz of spectrum and netting just over $10 billion. That includes 30 stations that agreed upfront to switch from UHF to VHF frequencies, according to FCC spokesman Charlie Meisch.

Of the remaining 145 stations, 30 have filed an application with the FCC to implement a channel-sharing agreement, while 20 channels have committed to going dark, Meisch said Wednesday. The rest will have to pick a lane in the coming months.

All of the Chicago stations that sold their spectrum in the auction initially indicated they would look to channel-share.

WOCH-Ch. 41, a low-powered Chicago station which most recently aired Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Comet TV sci-fi network, filed to discontinue operations on Aug. 8 and pulled the plug three days later. It notified viewers 30 days in advance of going dark, according to its FCC filing.

The other four Chicago stations that sold their frequencies in the auction look to be staying on the air through channel-sharing agreements. Construction permit applications must be filed with the FCC by Nov. 24.

Owned by Spanish language broadcaster Univision, WXFT-Ch. 60 signed a deal in January 2016 to share frequency allocated to ABC-owned WLS-Ch. 7. The stations filed a construction permit application in June and have begun testing, with the channel-sharing expected to begin within six months, sources said.

Both stations are expected to continue broadcasting their primary and secondary channels with no loss of service, sources said.

WWTO-Ch. 35 in LaSalle County filed an application to channel-share with WLPD, a low-power TV station in Plano. Owned by California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network, WWTO sold its frequency for $304 million — the highest price paid for any station in the nation.

While the construction permit applications have yet to be filed, WSNS will share channels with co-owned NBC station WMAQ-Ch. 5, while WPWR will share with co-owned Fox station WFLD-Ch. 32, both networks confirmed.

The Chicago broadcast spectrum buyers included AT&T, T-Mobile, Dish Network and Comcast.

Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, was both a buyer and a seller in the auction.


www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-wycc-tv-channel-sharing-20170922-story.html

[ajk]

And not to beat this to death but here's one more article that does a good job of explaining the bigger picture. It's from the main newspaper in Pittsburgh.


Big money from FCC auction means end of some TV stations

Rob Owen and Maria Sciullo
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - April 19, 2017


For some television stations, there was money — a great deal of it — in the air.

Licensed airwaves, commonly known as broadcast spectrum, were recently auctioned off by the Federal Communications Commission in a years-long process that will see some stations eventually go off the air, including five low-power stations in the Pittsburgh area.

The changes won’t affect Pittsburgh’s larger stations, such as KDKA, although WQED will be moving to a different frequency within the next 39 months. Meanwhile, the sale of the smaller stations’ broadcast licenses reaped a financial windfall for their owners.

The first-of-its-kind auction was sanctioned by Congress. It concluded in March, and wireless providers such as Verizon, T-Mobile and Comcast snapped up space on the spectrum to repurpose it for their own commercial use. Satellite providers such as Dish Network also shopped.

The proliferation of devices such as cell phones, laptops and tablets created the demand, and auction buyers were willing to pay TV station owners more than $10 billion in total for their frequencies.

An additional $7 billion will go to the federal government. The FCC will spend years on the process of reassigning roughly 1,100 TV stations and services to other frequencies.

If demand was driven by the growth in digital devices, the supply was fed in part by the shift in how Americans are getting their shows.

Imagine over-the-air frequencies as a highway. There are only so many lanes, and some are larger than others. Television stations own the biggest chunk of this real estate, but with many people watching via cable or internet-connected devices, the necessity to broadcast over the air is diminishing.

Television stations large and small were given the chance to free up space by selling off some, or all, of this real estate. The 175 stations that chose to participate had several options after selling, including moving to a lower space on the spectrum (such as UHF), merging/renting spectrum with another station, or closing.

The auction was conducted in stages, with results made public to all within the past week.

The “industry and Congress came up with a plan whereby they would generate spectrum to be used for wireless use,” said Don Everist, a consulting engineer in Washington, D.C. “They would offer broadcasters a certain amount of money if they wanted to somehow change their facilities or go off the air.”

Even if a station sold all of its broadcast spectrum, it could continue to operate on cable or through the internet. This is not true of public broadcast stations such as Pittsburgh’s WQED, however, whose mission states it must be available to the entire community, which means over the air.

WQED did sell a portion for more than $9 million and has three years in which to change its broadcast equipment in order to move to a low-VHF frequency.

After the announcement in February, Deborah Acklin, WQED Multimedia president and CEO said, “I’m thrilled, I’m excited, it’s miraculous. It’s a reversal of fortune for this community institution that is truly historic.

“We have in some way, shape or form been burdened by financial issues for 30-plus years and this wipes it all away in one fell swoop.”

At least one public broadcast station, Howard University’s WHUT in Washington, D.C., reconsidered and withdrew from the auction. Other universities took the plunge: WPBO in Charleston/Huntington, W.Va., is owned by Ohio State University and will go off the air, having sold its broadcast license for $8.8 million, while Ohio University’s WOUC in Columbus made $18.4 million and will be moving to low-VHF.

Months before the auction began, Pittsburgh network affiliates KDKA, WTAE and WPXI said they had no intention of participating.

Some small stations made huge amounts of money; WWTO-TV, a commercial enterprise in Chicago, is owned by Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana Inc. It will receive $304 million and go dark.

Five Pittsburgh-area, low-power stations owned by Over The Air Broadcasting will be closing their doors. The company made more than $73 million in the auction, selling spectrum from WEPA Channel 59, WEMW, WNNB, WPCP and WVTX.

Even after the five stations disappear, OTA Broadcasting will have stations broadcasting Cozi, Movies! And Retro TV in Butler, Charleroi, Kittanning, Uniontown, Washington and Weirton, W.Va. Carol LaFever, chief operating officer for Fairfax, Va.-based OTA, said she expects to retain carriage on FiOS TV.

But Mr. Everist said it is unclear if other stations around the country that will go off-air have plans for where their programming will be broadcast in the future.

“Whatever their programming is — it’s locally oriented probably, that’s the only way they’ve been able to survive — where will they go?” Mr. Everist said. “I don’t think anyone knows that yet.”

Pittsburgh’s Ron Bruno is one of the managers of Fifth Street Enterprises LLC, a Los Angeles investors group that owns WBOA 29 in Kittanning. After selling its spectrum for $19 million, that station will eventually go dark.

The same goes for Greensburg’s WQVC 46. It will go off the air, having earned its LocusPoint WQVC Licensee of Pleasanton, Calif., $11 million.

In Youngstown, Ohio, Nexstar Media Group’s low-power WKBN-TV brought a sale price of $34 million and has a different strategy for continuing to broadcast over the air. It sold its spectrum but will share a transmitter with WYTV, located just down the road.

Brett Jenkins, chief technology officer for Nexstar, said, “The good news is, no one will lose service over this.”

Before the auction process began, there was speculation as to how much bidders would be willing to pay. Amounts varied wildly, and now that it is finished, there is still debate as to the level of the auction’s success.

In January, outgoing FCC chairman Tom Wheeler made his own pronouncement:

“The world’s first spectrum incentive auction has delivered on its ambitious promise. Reaching the Final Stage Rule means the benefits of the auction are indisputable. We will repurpose 70 MHz of high-value, completely clear low-band spectrum for mobile broadband on a nationwide basis.

“On top of that, 14 MHz of new unlicensed spectrum — the test bed for wireless innovation — will be available for consumer and new services. The auction will provide $10.05 billion to broadcast television licensees who participated and billions towards [federal] deficit reduction.

“There is still a long road ahead to successfully implement the post-auction transition of broadcast stations to their new channels and bring wireless and unlicensed spectrum to market,” he said.

“This will be an extremely important task for my successor and the new commission; I wish them well.”

[ajk]

Am very sorry to report that WYCC Channel 20 has ceased operations and is no longer broadcasting.

A sad day for Chicago to lose such a nice little station. Also it was a PBS alternative to WTTW, and the competition was definitely a good thing. WYCC was broadcasting things like old Doctor Who episodes (and WTTW has completely turned its back on Doctor Who--again). And I'll always be grateful to it for introducing me to The Red Green Show! Why WTTW never ran Red Green is beyond me; it's a treasure. And lots of other little things, like the silent movies they'd run late on Saturday nights sometimes. You never knew when you might stumble across something fun or interesting on WYCC.

Admittedly some of their programming hasn't been all that great in recent years and the station never seemed to have enough support. Plus it was owned by the City Colleges of Chicago (YCC = "your City Colleges") so it's not like it had deep pockets behind it. So this isn't entirely a surprise. But it's still a shame.

Another disappointing part of this is that one of WYCC's two digital subchannels is carrying the MhZ network, which runs foreign programming. Some of our forum veterans here will remember that MhZ carried Thursday night Korean dramas for a while. Haven't shown any of those for several years but they carry a lot of subtitled European mysteries and dramas, and English-language versions of news broadcasts from many foreign networks. Right now the MhZ website says that they're not sure if another Chicago station will pick them up, and they're asking people to contact WTTW and lobby them to do it. Frankly knowing WTTW I'd be very surprised if that happened.

For now 20.1, 20.2 and 20.3 are still operating. 20.1 is simulcasting MhZ which runs on 20.3, and 20.2 is continuing to carry the FNX network that carries programs for and about native Americans and indigenous peoples. (No word on the future of FNX here.) But the plug gets pulled on all of them on November 27 and the broadcast frequencies go dark.

Of course so much is available through the Internet these days that the loss of a broadcast station doesn't have the impact that it had in the past. But it's still a sad occasion to lose a smaller, more independent station. Especially for those of us who grew up before massive Internet video streaming, these stations have been local friends and places to discover new things. I'm here and watching K-historicals because of one of those stations.

Forgive the long post that has very little to do with Korean programming...but thanks to WYCC for everything it gave Chicago TV viewers over the years.

[ajk]

So apparently WTTW Channel 11 is going to buy WYCC's license and continue to broadcast the MhZ Worldview channel as a new subchannel (presumably it will be 11.5) in Chicago.

They'll give some internships to City College students and make some public service announcements about city colleges. And that's all that will be left of WYCC. Certainly not expecting to see any of WYCC's programs showing up on WTTW subchannels. A disappointing outcome.


WTTW plans to buy rival public TV station WYCC's broadcast license

By Robert Channick
Chicago Tribune - December 7, 2017

The owner of WTTW-Ch. 11 said Thursday that it is seeking to buy now-dark rival WYCC-Ch. 20 from City Colleges of Chicago in a move that would put both Chicago public TV stations under one corporate umbrella.

Under the terms of the deal, which requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission, Window to the World Communications would pay $100,000 for WYCC’s station license.

The stations are expected to finalize the deal “over the next few business” days, Anne Gleason, senior vice president of marketing and digital media for WTTW's parent company, said in an email.

WTTW also has agreed to provide internships for City Colleges students and make announcements available to promote college services in the community, Gleason said.

In addition to the purchase agreement, the stations are planning to file a channel-sharing application with the FCC to move WYCC’s programming over to WTTW’s broadcast frequency as a fifth subchannel.

WTTW plans to run MHz Worldview, a Virginia-based public TV network featuring international dramas and newscasts, on WYCC.

The City Colleges board approved a resolution to pursue the channel-sharing and purchase agreements at a meeting Thursday morning.

While the channel-sharing and license transfer applications will be filed concurrently, each will require separate FCC approval.

FCC spokesman Charlie Meisch declined to comment on the applications, which have yet to be filed, but said the license transfer would go through the same scrutiny as any other proposed deal.

WYCC sold its frequency earlier this year for nearly $16 million in an FCC spectrum auction designed to shift a portion of the broadcast airwaves to wireless mobile use. The "winning" stations had the option to channel-share with another TV station or go off the air.

WYCC went off the air on Nov. 27, as previously announced to viewers, and notified the FCC it had ceased broadcast operations “due to financial difficulties,” according to a filing.

There is no target date for its return to the air via WTTW’s frequency.

Last year, WYCC had a staff of 26 and an annual budget of nearly $8.2 million, according to public filings, with City Colleges providing more than $5.7 million of the funding.

In October, WYCC dropped its PBS affiliation, ended its locally produced shows and replaced all programming with MHz Worldview.

[ajk]

MhZ Worldview will be back in Chicago after all. WTTW agreed to pick it up and run it. Here's a Chicago Tribune article with the specifics. The article characterizes it as WYCC returning and that's not really what's happening; WTTW bought the WYCC broadcast license but all they'll be carrying is MhZ which is a syndicated channel. But like I said, it does carry some English-language newscasts from foreign counties, and a lot of subtitled foreign-language programming from Europe. So the Chicago airwaves are certainly better and more diverse with MhZ than without it...so we'll take it. Maybe someday they'll run some Korean dramas again like they did for a while.


Public TV station WYCC to return in April on shared channel with WTTW-Ch. 11

By Robert Channick
Chicago Tribune - March 23, 2018

Chicago public TV station WYCC-Ch. 20, which went off the air in November, is set to return next month thanks to a channel-sharing agreement with former rival WTTW-Ch. 11.

The new channel, dubbed WYCC MHz Worldview, will borrow a portion of WTTW’s airwaves beginning at 5 a.m. April 23 to run the full slate of international dramas and newscasts that formerly aired on one of WYCC’s secondary digital channels.

“We’re excited about it and the potential going forward, and we know that the WYCC audience is eager to see this channel come back,” Anne Gleason, senior vice president of marketing and digital media for WTTW's parent company, said in an email Friday.

WYCC sold its licensed frequency in a Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction last year.

Viewers may have to hunt to find the station’s new home. WYCC, which went dark Nov. 27, will broadcast on Channel 20.1, but over-the-air viewers will need to rescan available channels on their TVs to pick up the new frequency.

Chicago-area Comcast subscribers will be able to watch WYCC on Channel 372.

WYCC will air everything from Swedish crime drama “Missing” to France 24 Live as part of the station’s renewed affiliation with MHz Worldview, a Virginia-based public TV network. WYCC’s primary channel — a mix of local shows and PBS staples — is gone for good, Gleason said.

City Colleges of Chicago, which launched WYCC in 1983 as a “distant learning” channel and public TV alternative, sold the station’s frequency last year for about $16 million in an FCC spectrum auction designed to shift a portion of the broadcast airwaves to wireless mobile use. WYCC had the option to channel-share with another TV station or go off the air.

Window to the World Communications, the owner of WTTW, struck a deal in December with City Colleges to share a channel with WYCC. The FCC approved the agreement in January.

WTTW also agreed to buy WYCC’s license for $100,000. The FCC approved the transfer on March 13 and the deal is expected to close by the end of the month, Gleason said.