WB Affiliates on Ku-Band Satellite (1998)

[JosephHolloway1998]

although the primary WB Network feed was on C-Band (on Galaxy 4, transponder 9 and occupying Telstar 5, transponder 18 for some time (after the GALAXY 4 communications failure), before residing on Galaxy 6, transponder 7 (which was C-Band only, as SBS-6 was on the same orbital slot as that one)) and the superstations were already on there (KTLA - WB West, KWGN - WB Mountain, WGN - WB Central and WPIX - WB East), but which of the WB affiliates were on Ku-Band (regular) at the time, aside from what's listed here? (1998)

S3R-15L: KTLA 5 (WB - Los Angeles)
S3R-15U: WPIX 11 (WB - New York)
S3R-15U/G3R-11: KQCA 58 (WB - Sacramento) via "Kelly Broadcasting" feeds (though the KU side of G3R consisted of DirecTV Latin America programming (which moved to 8I), before traffic increased after the G4 shutdown)
I wonder what what other WB affiliates they carried back in '98? (though there weren't any 24/7 affiliates or networks on Ku except for NBC & PBS)

 

[harshness]

Why would affiliates be uplinked?

In 1998, Local into Local (LIL) in the pay TV marketplace wasn't a thing. The Satellite Home Viewer Act (SHVA) wouldn't come around until Fall 1999 when DBS operators were allowed to carry local stations.

I recall that Primestar carried a few local stations (including one of my locals, KOIN) during their short life (bought out by DIRECTV in 1999) but that coverage was very limited.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

+harshness I meant regular Ku-Band (not the ones direct to consumers).

 

[harshness]

+harshness I meant regular Ku-Band (not the ones direct to consumers).

What would be the purpose of making a local TV station's live programming available on satellite?

Your use of the phrase "regular Ku band" is poorly considered. Ku band is what is broadcast using the Ku frequencies. It isn't broken down into some magic subdivisions of applications perfomed. Most things that are done in Ku band are also done with C band at some level.

Assuming what happens commonly today was going on when you were born is folly. Some of it may have been but a whole lot has changed in the last 20 years in terms of practices and technology.

Please concentrate on answering the question that my first sentence asks. If there's no reason to do something it is a lot easier to figure out how much effort you should spend on finding out who might have been doing it.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

+harshness Well I'm using that phrase ("regular Ku-band"), to differentiate itself from the DBS systems (Primestar, DirecTV/USSB, Dish Network) which are the only ones direct to consumers. To add to that most of their affiliates often get uplinked to feed their newsfeeds and their programming feeds (Alright, Already, Kelly Kelly, Invasion America (miniseries), Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher, The Parent' Hood, The Wayans Bros., Sister, Sister, Smart Guy, Unhappily Ever After, Steve Harvey, Jamie Foxx Show, 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson's Creek, Kids' WB, syndicated and off-network programs).

 

[harshness]

+harshness Well I'm using that phrase ("regular Ku-band"), to differentiate itself from the DBS systems (Primestar, DirecTV/USSB, Dish Network) which are the only ones direct to consumers.

Primestar was FSS; still Ku band but not DBS.

To add to that most of their affiliates often get uplinked to feed their newsfeeds and their programming feeds

The network uplinks the programming so the affiliates can downlink it. I think that's where you're going off the rails by calling what the affiliates do "uplinking". Uplinking is uniquely a process of sending to a satellite and the corresponding reception process is called downlinking.

I'm not sure when "live" uplinking became a thing. Back in the '80s, many network TV shows were distributed days before they were to be aired and the affiliates were responsible for temporary storage and playback at the appropriate time. For many, the ability to downlink the uplinks of broadcast programming is what drew them to satellite -- they could watch a show days before it aired OTA.

If I recall correctly, WB had no news feed.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

WB had no news feed.

That's true as only a handful of WB affiliates had news divisions at the time (they were part owned by the Tribune Company (now acquired by Nexstar Media Group) and the Sinclair Broadcast Group (after they snared affiliates from UPN)). regular Ku was FSS.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

but as far as I know KTLA Los Angeles, WPIX New York as well as WGN Chicago (both owned by Tribune Broadcasting) were also carried as superstations on Anik E2 (A2), WPIX 11 (WB-NYC) was on Echostar 3 (E3) despite it being a superstation (but it wasn't as popular in national carriage as WGN-TV), and KWGN 2 (WB-DEN) was on the newly launched-Echostar 4 (E4) (was on Echostar 3 prior to that) before DISH Net added it as a superstation on 1 July that year (end of June), but other than that, I'm not sure If The WB carried any affiliate feeds on FSS Ku-Band?

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

though not pertaining to this thread, speaking of what harshness said you can use the term FSS (Fixed-satellite services) or BSS (Broadcast satellite services), to differentiate it (Ku-band) from the DBS systems.

 

[harshness]

but as far as I know KTLA Los Angeles, WPIX New York as well as WGN Chicago (both owned by Tribune Broadcasting) were also carried as superstations on Anik E2 (A2), WPIX 11 (WB-NYC) was on Echostar 3 (E3) despite it being a superstation (but it wasn't as popular in national carriage as WGN-TV), and KWGN 2 (WB-DEN) was on the newly launched-Echostar 4 (E4) (was on Echostar 3 prior to that) before DISH Net added it as a superstation on 1 July that year (end of June), but other than that, I'm not sure If The WB carried any affiliate feeds on FSS Ku-Band?

That's a rather large run-on sentence. In general, I'd guess that your speculation was mostly, if not entirely incorrect.

Because of copyrights, The WB wouldn't normally be entitled to what the affiliates produce unless the stations were owned & operated (O&O) by The WB (since The WB aspect of what an affiliate aired amounted to 2-4 hours a day). Even if the stations were O&O, that wouldn't entitle The WB to redistribute the syndicated content that the affiliates used to fill the gaps.

That KTLA (owned by Times Mirror Corp at that time?) was a superstation was between KTLA and the pay TV carriers. WB had to sign off on rebroadcast on their small portion of the programming, but at least 20 hours of the content each day wasn't theirs. This is/was true of a lot of the networks that only provide(d) prime time programming.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

+harshness But other than that, I don't know if The WB carried any stations/affiliates on Ku-Band? (both FSS and BSS), I'm just being specific.

 

[harshness]

+harshness Other than that, I don't know if The WB carried any stations/affiliates on Ku-Band (both FSS and BSS), I'm just being specific.

Ignoring that they weren't allowed to do what you seem to hope that they were doing? I thought I was being specific that The WB had no business fetching and distributing content from affiliates. Their whole reason for being was to provide prime time programming to their affiliates.

Speculating about what frequency band or what polarity might have been used to do something that they were effectively prohibited from doing 20+ years ago benefits nobody. There are too many relevant (and possibly useful) things to speculate about to be wandering out in the weeds trying to re-engineer the past.

 

[bobvick]

Why would affiliates be uplinked?

In 1998, Local into Local (LIL) in the pay TV marketplace wasn't a thing. The Satellite Home Viewer Act (SHVA) wouldn't come around until Fall 1999 when DBS operators were allowed to carry local stations.

I recall that Primestar carried a few local stations (including one of my locals, KOIN) during their short life (bought out by DIRECTV in 1999) but that coverage was very limited.

That was one of the pacific time network feeds that Primestar used, you could get east and west coast networks. If you were in a ‘white area’ where you couldn’t get a grade B signal, you could subscribe. My grandmother had Primestar in the late 90’s and subscribed to the networks, both time zones. It was the same as C-Band and the Primetime 24 E&W, and Denver 5.


Sent from my iPad using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[harshness]

Of course Primestar's efforts didn't really cut into anyone's business so it didn't really matter. Once DIRECTV and DISH got ahold of LIL, it became a huge thing.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

Once again, the topic has to pertain to this thread (Ku-Band (FSS and BSS)).

 

[harshness]

Primestar was FSS as I stated in post #6. They had a plan to migrate to DBS but DIRECTV intervened.

The title is literally WB affiliates on Ku in 1998 and that seems to be a party of one.

What you're asking is a little like naming all of the Tour de France greats who have suffered testicular cancer. It isn't really relevant and likely won't impact the future of bicycle road racing.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

What you're asking is a little like naming all of the Tour de France greats who have suffered testicular cancer. It isn't really relevant and likely won't impact the future of bicycle road racing.

Sorry if it took me long to respond, but what I'm really asking for If there were any WB affiliates on Ku (non-DBS) in '98?, especially those outside of superstation range (i.e. WLWC New Bedford-Providence (UPN secondary), WNOL New Orleans, WGRB Campbellsville/Louisville (as the main WB outlet for the Louisville area (WBNA 21) was a conservative religious station (similar to KWHB Tulsa) and often considered preempting the netlet's more risque shows), WBNX Akron/Cleveland, WBNE Hartford/New Haven, WLVI Boston (S3-13U), WBGR Bangor (which eventually joined Pax as soon as the cable-only WBAN replaced it as the WB affiliate) etc...).

I know that WGN Chicago (as a superstation) was also carried on Primestar (GE-2 Ku/W7), and even the WB affiliates had to compete with the superstation feed of WGN (which stopped carrying WB programming by Oct. 1999) on a national level.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

So, you don't respond? (I was only using those affiliates as an example), Well I had been patient enough already and I still need to know If there were any WB affiliates on Ku (non-DBS; FSS and BSS) in 1998?

Well speaking of The WB's primary feed moving to a C-Band only satellite (Galaxy 6, transponder 7), I also wanted to chime in and say that "The WB Digital Feed" was on Galaxy 7, transponder 1 (although the Ku side of G7 (X7) consisted of the TCI Hits feeds which TCI used to distribute its channels (Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon (Nick Too), Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Multi-Plex HBO & Cinemax (including HBO Plus, HBO Signature, HBO Family, MoreMax, ActionMax, ThrillerMax), Showtime & The Movie Channel (Showtime 2, Showtime 3 etc...) to cable providers (including their "Digital Cable" service, MediaOne, Time Warner Cable, Marcus Cable, Comcast, Cablevision etc...)) which was for the cable-only WB 100+ Station Group (originally conceived as The WeB) stations, which are for smaller markets that rank below 100 (Yes, this was in the age before we had digital sub-channels as virtually few were available as over-the-air stations) and are unable to obtain an affiliation (or secondary affiliation) in those "White Areas". But there were several cable-only WB affiliates that operated similarly to the WB 100+ such as TVW (Television Wisconsin) in Madison, WI (which is now a digital sub-channel of WISC-TV), WT05 (or "Toledo's WB5") in Toledo, OH (which was exclusive to Buckeye Cable) and WRWB Rochester, NY (which was exclusive to Time Warner Cable ch. 26 at the time). Most of them used these call letters in a rather fictional manner.

 

[harshness]

So, you don't respond?

There's an excellent chance that nobody here knows the answer to your question.

 

[JosephHolloway1998]

The WB 100+ Station Group (The WeB) wasn't launched until September 1998 (around the same time, The WB's primary feed moved to a C-Band only satellite (Galaxy 6, transponder 7)), so they ran the "1-877-Dubba-WB" ads during & throughout the summer (in smaller markets) to promote the channel. This was one of them: (Note how there's no sound)