WTRF News in High Definition.

[Mr. Tom Jones]

Had the opportunity recently to talk with a friend who has a friend that is a TV GM in a top 20 market and had seen some of the WVMH financials.

(His station bills more in a year than the entire Bray empire, FWIW.)

I was told the reaction to the financials the top 20 GM had seen was along the lines of, "How the fsck can that station NOT make money! They've had an election every year for the past three years!"

It would not surprise me if Bray tires of paying news people and flips the infomercial switch. Depends on what happens at the next round of retrans negotiations.

[darkpower]

Had the opportunity recently to talk with a friend who has a friend that is a TV GM in a top 20 market and had seen some of the WVMH financials.

(His station bills more in a year than the entire Bray empire, FWIW.)

I was told the reaction to the financials the top 20 GM had seen was along the lines of, "How the fsck can that station NOT make money! They've had an election every year for the past three years!"

It would not surprise me if Bray tires of paying news people and flips the infomercial switch. Depends on what happens at the next round of retrans negotiations.

Well, I tried to send in a waiver (think I mentioned this before in this thread, though I'm not sure) about the ABC and FOX thing (them not being in HD despite them being advertised as such). Got something in the mail yesterday from DTV saying that it was "denied by local station". It's more or less it couldn't get past Bray's stubbornness and willingness to make money off of obvious monopoly attempts and not care about quality because, well, who is really going to stop him if no one does anything or if he forces people to watch sub par quality broadcasts).

However, in all fairness, I had a bad experience with a DTV customer support employee that might've contributed to the issue. When checking with the waiver, this person told me something different from what I was told twice. When I originally put in the waiver requests, the male told me that the FCC and FOX is not on good terms with each other, so the FCC is lenient about it, and that Cary has less pull than we might think (oh, and if you want a waiver on DTV for The CW, by the way, do it, since they don't have to do this process, and it takes 20 mins to do and costs about...3 bucks a month to have it). An email said that I had the right to ask for one. The female that I talked to (a week or so ago) to check told me that the guy should've never allowed me to put in a request, that they can't guarantee HD (which was not even what I was asking; the woman cut me off several times, to the point that I wondered if she was ever going to allow me to finish a sentence), and a bunch of other things. Not to mention that she would not just transfer me to another dept (tried to say that I had an issue that needed another dept, but I was really wanting to talk to her supervisor...didn't want her knowing that I was about to). I think she knew that I was not happy with the call and tried to keep me from talking to another person (which I made sure I had done so). Thus, I'll see if it had anything to do with the denial, but I highly doubt that it was because of that call I made.

In the meantime, I have taken another step. I have officially filed an FCC complaint about this issue. I think it's the only way for anything to get done (if enough people file them, they should take action, in theory, anyway) because it's obvious that Cary doesn't care what type of reputation he has (why should he when he buys up all the affiliations possible).

Here's what I wrote on the online form I used:

The station's digital channels (their ABC and FOX subchannels) have been advertised as HD when they do not appear to be over the air (only the local Comcast cable market has been able to display these in HD). The FOX feed has been "zoomed" to eliminate the pan and scan effect, making some sports broadcasts nearly unwatchable given the scoreboard bugs are cut in half many times. I had attempted to ask for waivers on my DirecTV account due to this issue, but I yesterday got a card stating that both were "denied by local station". This shouldn't be acceptable, and I'm sure I'm not the only person with this issue within the market about this station. The company seems to be trying to monopolize the market with taking up all the affiliations with this method then forcing people to not have a choice besides watching something that's advertised as something it's clearly not. I would like to see DTV customers be comped somehow, and for WHMV [sic] AND the station to be held responsible. Thank you.

Yeah, I had messed up the WVMH thing, but I listed the company in the "company" field correctly, so they should know who I was talking about, hopefully.

[Mr. Tom Jones]

Good luck with your waiver request, Darkpower, and let everyone here know how the FCC thing goes.

Seems to me John Raese got Bray in trouble a few years back with the FCC Public Information file regulations. It's my understanding that's why the WVMH stations have to run a PSA saying their Public Information files are available during normal business hours.

[Crottinger]

I recently watched WTRF News. They don't have a set. It looks like a one man operation, low budget, poor quality. Very sad. Looks like something from Youtube rather than a professional news operation. Channel 7 looked better years ago. What happened to channel 7? Are they trying to look amatuerish?

[---]

WTRF doesn't have a set?! And the same thing happened to them as did WBOY, WOWK, and WTRF : West Virginia Media.