Off Topic: DTV Transition in Chicago

After 60 years of NTSC transmissions saturating Chicagoland, we are now bathing in the electronic ether of a new era.  ATSC television, commonly known as DTV, is now officially the law of the land for all full-power television stations in America.

From what we've heard from people in the industry, problems varied widely by market.  Houston didn't have many problems because so many people there are already wedded to their satellite dishes.  But not too far away in Baton Rouge, we hear it was pretty much a disaster with thousands of people unexpectedly staring at snow.

From what we've heard, Chicago was one of the bumpier markets.  Most stations fielded a few hundred to a couple of thousand phone calls when the plugs were pulled on channels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc...  But for a market the size of Chicago, a few thousand unhappy people isn't too bad.

With any wireless medium, the results vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, house to house, even room to room.  We lost a bunch of stations in the switch, but gained some others.  Here's a chart of what happened here in downtown Chicago:

As stated earlier, your mileage will vary.

WBBM-TV manages to screw up a landmark

It's been a couple of decades since WBBM-TV ("CBS2" in consultant-speak) made much of an impact on the city of Chicago.  It's ratings have been in the crapper for years.  Its analog signal is barely visible even just a mile away from the transmitter.  And digital?  Forget about it.

As a former CBS -> Westinghouse -> CBS employee, I have a soft spot for the Tiffany Network.  I looked forward to a new age of Eye greatness starting with the opening of the new CBS2 Broadcast Studios at 22 West Washington.  I should have known I would be disappointed.

The Skyline lets us know that CBS has chickened out.  Again.  Instead of giving us an 80-foot-wide video screen wrapping around its corner of Block 37, WBBM-TV will instead have a video screen that's less than half that wide.  And it doesn't wrap.  Oh, and it's shorter, too.

I never worked for CBS in Chicago, but I have several friends who have and do.  They say it's typical of the way things run there these days -- take a big, important, brilliant plan and beat it into a homogenized, non-offensive, piece of who-gives-a-crap.  They say the video screen is emblematic of the state of the news that comes out of there:  small, lackluster, full of potential, but ultimately a child of compromise.

The Trib says there were complaints about the screen.  It's typical of local television stations to be hyper-sensitive to any little fringe group with an acronym and a word processor, but it's unclear if that's the reason CBS changed its great plans into mediocre plans.  Even the architects presented CBS with several dramatic alternatives if a smaller screen must be used.  Not surprisingly, these experts were ignored and the station decided to play architect and stick the screen centered above its studio.

Good job, WBBM-TV.  Once again you've proven to Chicago that you're a non-factor.