Tv station dropping numbers?

[Lance Uppercut]

Is it happening to you guys too or just something happing by my area?

Here, the fox network and the cbs network have managed to own their main channels and a local formerly independent station.

Here it’s always been Fox 11 and CBS 2. Fox bought the channel that used to be the UPN a long time ago. It was weird because I believe they acquired them while they were still upn, and then Mynetwork tv, then they went back to its original independent name of kcop and now it’s some weird deal where the morning time it’s the Decades channel, then syndicated programming mixed in with LA specific programming, and then it’s my network tv again from 11-3 at night.

Recently, the rebranded the whole thing as Fox La (fox 11) and now channel 13 is Fox Plus.

CBS bought channel 9 which was formerly KCAL 9 and everything was relatively separate for the most part aside from cbs moving some their shows over whenever they wanted to pre empt them for news programming they already had schedule like Covid or presidential news, or soccer programming. Recently, I turned on the tv and it’s kind of confusing.

Channel 2 11:00am news rebranding itself from cbs news to kcal news. It’s so confusing why they’d rebrand their news programming with the name of the other channel, not to mention its the name of the lesser known local channel and not the bigger cbs name. Also, they recently had a commercial where they said instead of CBS 2, it’s now “cbs Los Angeles”.

It’s so weird. I’m not the biggest fan of local or syndicated programming era of tv from back in the day, but it’s kind of sad seeing what happened to those two channels. Used have great sports and off network shows. Now it’s just some weird 24 run of court room judge reality shows or non stop news.

[fg]

Some of My affiliates in my area still have the numbers. My area (southwest Florida) also has a high cable penetration rate which means that all the broadcast channels are NOT on their over the air channel number and some of the broadcast channels that use numbers use their cable channel number. (For phone company TV and satellite dishes, it’s a different story.)

[Cyno]

The numbers are still an important part of the branding of the NYC affiliates. I think Fox is the only one that's downplayed Fox 5 in favor of Fox NY.

[Milkman Norm]

Back in my day WBBM was Channel 2, WMAQ was Channel 5, WLS was Channel 7,WGN was Channel 9 & WFLD was Channel 32. And that's the way we liked it!

[ayumidah]

All of our local affiliates are meshed together in one way or another.

So originally, our local affiliates were

CBS -- WMBD
ABC -- WHOI
NBC -- WEEK
Fox- WYZZ

Then NBC affiliate took over the ABC affiliate and now both of their call signs are WEEK. Good luck with that one when you're looking at a channel guide. NBC also took over the CW affiliate. Our CBS affiliate has some agreement with the Fox affiliate so they share a studio and staff. Also, the Fox affiliate is a sister channel with the ABC affiliate.

[Display Name]

OP, I’m in the same area as you and you just blew my mind. Fox Plus? So weird.

[J Lee O'Brien]

Mar 7, 2023 23:02:50 GMT -5 ayumidah said:

All of our local affiliates are meshed together in one way or another.

So originally, our local affiliates were

CBS -- WMBD
ABC -- WHOI
NBC -- WEEK
Fox- WYZZ

Then NBC affiliate took over the ABC affiliate and now both of their call signs are WEEK. Good luck with that one when you're looking at a channel guide. NBC also took over the CW affiliate. Our CBS affiliate has some agreement with the Fox affiliate so they share a studio and staff. Also, the Fox affiliate is a sister channel with the ABC affiliate.

So it's gone from 19, 25, 31, 43, and 59 for MyNetwork or whatever, to what 103 (19+25+59) and 77 (31+43)?

Is the WMBD AM station still 1470 or did that get changed too?

[ayumidah]

Mar 8, 2023 22:37:13 GMT -5 J Lee O'Brien said:

Mar 7, 2023 23:02:50 GMT -5 ayumidah said:

All of our local affiliates are meshed together in one way or another.

So originally, our local affiliates were

CBS -- WMBD
ABC -- WHOI
NBC -- WEEK
Fox- WYZZ

Then NBC affiliate took over the ABC affiliate and now both of their call signs are WEEK. Good luck with that one when you're looking at a channel guide. NBC also took over the CW affiliate. Our CBS affiliate has some agreement with the Fox affiliate so they share a studio and staff. Also, the Fox affiliate is a sister channel with the ABC affiliate.

So it's gone from 19, 25, 31, 43, and 59 for MyNetwork or whatever, to what 103 (19+25+59) and 77 (31+43)?

Is the WMBD AM station still 1470 or did that get changed too?

I don't listen to AM radio but last I knew, that's the one thing that hasn't changed

[Dr. T is an alien]

A lot of my local channels have gotten weird because of the digital channels. Locally, there’s 4 channel 2’s (2.1-2.4), 3 channel 4’s, 3 channel 6’s, 2 channel 8’s, 3 channel 38’s, and a whopping 6 channel 30’s (half of which are PBS derivatives).

This remains despite the fact that many of the channels have consolidated. There are cross-brand owners and the local CBS affiliate bought a large independent channel and shifted their main channel to the independent channel because it had a license to broadcast both throughout the whole state and into the neighboring states.