In the first days of 2022, a Hubbard Broadcasting NBC affiliate it has owned since 1996 asked the FCC for its permission to move to a more powerful digital UHF signal, while keeping its PSIP.
Before such a decision could be made, the FCC opened the request up for public comment. Now, Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman has ruled on the matter.
Channel 21 can be substituted for digital Channel 12 by WNYT-13 in Albany-Schenectady-Troy.
It was an easy decision for Kreisman — no comments were filed aside from those by Hubbard.
What does this mean for WNYT viewers? Hubbard applied for, and received, modification authorizations to increase the station’s effective radiated power (ERP) from
9.1 kW to 30 kW.
This will result in a net gain in service to 289,588 persons within the station’s predicted noise limited service contour.
With the ruling, the Table of Allotments for the Albany, NY DMA is amended to digital Channels 8, 21 and 24. Nexstar-owned WTEN-10 uses Digital Channel 24; WXXA-23, the FOX affiliate, uses VHF digital channel 8.
For anyone who has spent time in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy market, terrain is an important concern for radio and TV stations. While some signals may travel 50 miles to the south, depending on what hill you’re on, they may not extend across the metropolitan area and up to Glens Falls and Saratoga Springs. In the case of WNYT, the proximity of the Green, Berkshire, Catskill, and Adirondack mountain ranges has resulted in the operation of multiple television translator stations in an effort to serve viewers.
Indeed, across the 1980s WNYT operated a translator in Kingston, N.Y., giving the city superior coverage to that of now-defunct WTEN satellite WCDC-19, offering ABC programming, and the often-snowy WRGB-6, the CBS affiliate in Albany. Once WNYT began operating solely in digital on VHF channel 12, Hubbard says it received “numerous complaints” from viewers about the station’s over-the-air signal.
