One self-correction I would make, is back then the Comcast I'm referring to was called AT&T Broadband, before Comcast swooped in and locked up most of the area buying them and the other smaller providers.
More info for you, going further back than 2009:
Chicagoland Television - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And this is still just a distracting minor point in the fact of Tribune trying to squeeze DTV, which if it succeeds, all the other locals will join the bandwagon, and guess who'll then be paying for it? Sure won't be DTV and I don't expect them to. What we pay for now with the locals is the hardware and tech support to get local tv into DTV's system, not the programming itself. To me, Tribune's crossing a line with this in insisting we pay for broadcast tv programming that supposed to be already advertiser paid for.