This is topic Most of Hawaii is without ABC TV programming in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-11-2012, 05:38 PM:
 
Due to a financial dispute between KITV the Hawaii affiliate of ABC Television and Oceanic the local cable provider owned by Time Warner, most of Hawaii's television viewers are not receiving programing from that station and the ABC network. There were negotiations before the shutdown between the TV station and Time-Warner but it went into a stalemate resulting in the shut down. Because KITV sends signals to all the major island and Oceanic provides service statewide, the entire state is affected. Beside Oceanic, Time Warner also owns several other cable outlets on the mainland and the dispute also include Boston, Portland, Main, Winston Salem,N.C., Lincoln, Neb., Louisville, Ky., Cincinnati, New York and Kansas City, Mo.

I am an Oceanic Cable subscriber but because I use my television to watch movies on Blu-Ray and DVDs most evenings, I have not been affected by the shutdown.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 07-11-2012, 10:28 PM:
 
I am in Louisville. Our local cable: Insight/Time/Warner has tossed the local CBS affiliate WLKY. Currently we are getting WROC Rochester NY, which is CBS.

Kinda nice seeing lawyer ads from another area. Some good, some bad. (Is it obvious by now that there are only 3 news consultants in the country. Even the voice overs are the same. Graphics and sensational stories, too. Must be a news "package." Louis
 

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Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 07-12-2012, 12:14 AM:
 
DirecTV recently went through the same BS with one of our local affiliate stations. They finally got it back on the air a few weeks after the blackout.

EDIT: In fact, just saw on our local news that Viacom has pulled ALL of their channels (SpikeTV, BET, Comedy Central, etc a total of 28 channels) off DirecTV over a fee dispute....

With the ridiculous rates we have to pay for satellite and cable service, there is no excuse for this kind of thing to be happening. But of course the FCC has been deballed to the point they are useless, so no chance of help or regulation there.
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 07-12-2012, 01:34 AM:
 
My local ABC affiliate is on VHF and usually doesn't come in- I don't miss it
 

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Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 07-14-2012, 08:04 PM:
 
The answer - an antenna. Then you get your local stations for FREE (and with a better looking picture than on cable or sat). Tell cable and sat that they are over priced, and kick them out of your house.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-14-2012, 09:26 PM:
 
Yeah! I often get telemarketing calls from Dish Network saying, "We guarantee we can beat your cable TV bill." My answer is, "No, you can't." When they ask how much my bill is, I answer, "Zero!"

There's usually silence on the other end...

Right now, I get twelve channels over the air with an antenna on the roof. When the weather is right I can get two or three more. If you count the tree channels of televangelist that's 18 channels, totally for free.

I hope this blackout in Hawaii drags on for a good, long time. That will teach the networks and the cable companies that people really don't care and, hopefully they'll learn that over the air broadcast is the way to go.
 

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Posted by Ron Funderburg (Member # 4561) on 07-14-2012, 09:30 PM:
 
I hate TV waist of time.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-14-2012, 10:24 PM:
 
^^^ How are its hips, though?
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-14-2012, 11:48 PM:
 
KITV, our ABC affiliate is still out and it looks like a settlement is a long way off. The company that owns the station as well as the others on the mainland I had mentioned wants a three hundred percent increase in fees and Time-Warner is not willing to pay and I do not blame them. I have watched all the episodes of WEST WING, LOST, GRAYS ANATHOMY and PRIVATE PRACTICE but never when it aired. Like many series on other network I enjoy, I have viewed all my favorite ABC shows on either DVD or Blu-Ray. The only programs I watch on over the air TV is emergency broadcast such as last years tsunami alert from the Japanese earthquake, Academy Awards, night time Emmy awards and Turner Classic Movie when there is a good movie on. Because I get almost all my entertainment from a home video source, I will never miss broadcast shows on cable when greedy television station owners would try to extort unreasonable fees from cable TV providers.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 07-15-2012, 11:10 AM:
 
Claude: Do you have any satellite programming in Hawaii? I know I have seen satellite feeds on cruise ships in the Islands, so there must be something as an alternative to Time Warner.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-15-2012, 02:15 PM:
 
Yes we do, Jeff,
DirectTV serves Hawaii with satellite service.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 07-15-2012, 03:06 PM:
 
Might be time to get the dish Claude. Overall I have found DirecTv's service (technical) to be great. Their customer service is variable at best though (Billing problems mainly) but once you're set up and running you shouldn't have to have any contact with them.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-15-2012, 04:30 PM:
 
Tony, no disrespect intended but you must not have read my comments I had posted carefully when I said I prefer watching movies on Blu-Ray and DVDs on my HDTV than network and regular television programs.

I have heard DirectTV is good but someone told me once how bad weather can screw up the reception during severe storms. is that true?

-Claude
 

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Posted by Jeff Stricker (Member # 224) on 07-16-2012, 07:30 AM:
 
If there is heavy rain in the path between the satellite and your receiving dish, the signal can be interrupted. It doesn't happen often and usually lasts only a few minutes.
 

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Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 07-16-2012, 07:54 AM:
 
I have Directv in both my houses and am very happy with it. As Jeff says there are occasional weather related outages, but for very brief periods. I got it because I couldn't be bothered to remember two channel lineups, but also appreciate that when the power does go out, the Directv comes right back when my generator kicks in. Give it some consideration.
 

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Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 07-16-2012, 11:59 AM:
 
For some reason, I've lost my ABC-TV progamming here in San Francisco too
last week. Odd, since I get everything "off air", and the RF signal levels
on all my other channels are exactly where they've always been.
(and everything comes off of the same transmitting tower- and I have a
direct, line-of sight to it) I tried re-scanning both my TV's, & still no ABC.

I don't really miss it. A visual inspection of my antenna set up doesn't show
any obvious problems. Very Odd, but I'm not loosing sleep over it.

ACTUAL PHOTO (WoW!)OF MY ANTENNA

The tower is about 3mi away. I could probably stick a
coat-hanger on a piece of coax & get a decent signal.

I dropped my cable several years ago, since I'm way too busy to watch much TV.
Best decision I ever made. I didn't realize what a time (and money) waster it was.

If I did decide to go back to pay TV, I'd go with satellite, since almost all my
freinds who have it say it's better in both quality & customer service than the
local cable provider. (Comcast)
 

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Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-16-2012, 02:02 PM:
 
Jim,

That picture illustrates the term "line of Sight!"
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-16-2012, 07:14 PM:
 
Both my sister and I have been very happy with Time Warner 's Oceanic Cable . At one time we used to get the full package including HBO, Showtime, and other premium movie channels as well as the standard stuff like Discovery Channel, ESPN, CNN, CNBC, FOX and Turner Classic Movies but we dropped all the premium movie channels and have never missed them. In addition to Cable TV, I also subscribe to Time Waner's Road Runner high speed Internet service and I am very happy with it. As I had mentioned, I rarely watch cable TV programs but my sister does and she enjoys Oceanic Cable's service. I guess ABC being down is not troubling her because she has not said anything about it.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 07-17-2012, 01:00 AM:
 
I love it when I get a call trying to get me to subscribe to satellite TV, or when one of those DirecTV guys approaches me at Best Buy. I always tell them that if they can find ONE channel that I would actually want to watch and found worth paying for, I would sign up right away. They never can find anything- One time someone showed me the program guide and I picked one thing that looked interesting, but when they changed the channel to it there was a commercial break! I told them I don't pay to watch commercials.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-17-2012, 02:57 AM:
 
Semi-related Q: does C-band satellite still exist in any form that is usable by the consumer? Or did digital broadcasts and scrambled signals kill it? I always thought it would be interesting to be able to watch network feeds and other material that is unavailable (at any price) on cable or small-dish systems, but I assume that much of that stuff is no longer transmitted in the same way as it was in the 1980s and 1990s.

I don't watch much TV, personally, and I am totally happy with over-the-air SD broadcasts. I had terrible analog reception in my apartment, and digital was a huge improvement (much to my surprise). I am cheap and would not pay for TV just for myself. At about $50/month, given how little I would watch, it is just not worthwhile, although it becomes much easier to justify the cost for a larger family.

Earlier this year, there was an antenna problem in this market that took out four stations (CBS, ABC, the smaller of two PBS stations, and an independent) for a few days. For a while (and possibly still), these stations were broadcasting with a temporary setup at reduced power.
 

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Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 07-17-2012, 06:03 AM:
 
Claude: I applaud Time Warner for their position. As you know any rate increase for programming would ultimately be recovered from the subscriber base. A 300% increase by the content provider stinks of greed.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-17-2012, 10:18 AM:
 
It's typical media company greed. They try to ram all sorts of rate increases through the service providers, be it cable or satellite. They don't really care about the position of cable or satellite providers having to either pass along those rate increases to customers or let the increases eat away their own bottom line. The media companies are only concerned with the wants of share holders. They don't care that the economy is still struggling and many Americans have their finances stretched very thin. They're not concerned about how much "churn" (lost customers) will affect the service providers when they try to pass along the rate hikes. It's just obnoxious, arrogant stupidity.

I have been strongly considering ditching my pay TV subscription for a variety of reasons.

On the personal side, I spend a lot of time working out and doing other things. So there's not a whole lot of spare time to spend watching TV. I just had another short-term relationship fizzle; while things were good I was spending quite a few evenings at her place. With the pattern I'm currently in I'll probably be doing the same shit with a different woman in a matter of weeks. When I do have spare time to watch TV I would probably be better off using that time for more constructive purposes, like doing things to fix up my home. The $75 per month I'm currently paying for Dish Network might help a little with those home improvement costs.

A lot of TV programming has really gone to shit. I have a decent outdoor antenna and can pick up half a dozen OTA HD channels. But so much of OTA network programming is filled with reality show crap, American Idol and its copycats as well as other things I just don't find very interesting. I have HBO, primarily for their original TV series shows. The Newsroom and Game of Thrones are pretty good. True Blood is kind of getting old. I'm not really into the other shows. Given what a season box set costs it would be cheaper just buying or renting that way; the only downside is the extra 1 year wait before it is released on Blu-ray.

I don't watch any of the cable news channels because I think CNN, MSNBC, Headline News and Fox News are all garbage. They've dumbed down their content for the mouth-breathers and run too many stories filled with opinion and half-truths making it a waste of time to watch. It's not news. It's infotainment.

I used to like the Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic Channel etc. but too much of their air time is now wasted on reality show stuff and other trash content. I don't really feel like seeing another show following biker gangs or thugs in prison. That stuff is depressing. What happened to all the nature stuff which showed off the beauty in this world?

MTV and VH1 need to change their names to something else that doesn't involve music. They're not "Music Television" and "Video Hits 1" anymore. Something like "SA" and "SV" would be more appropriate (they stand for Snooki's Asshole and Snooki's Vagina).

It's probably a good sign I just need to ditch pay TV when I find myself leaving the TV set on The Weather Channel for an hour or two before realizing it.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-17-2012, 10:33 AM:
 

quote: Bobby Henderson

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It's probably a good sign I just need to ditch pay TV when I find myself leaving the TV set on The Weather Channel for an hour or two before realizing it.

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