WKBN, FOX to disrupt service

Shutoff to last about 12 hours

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

vindicator entertainment writer

Residents who don’t have either Time Warner Cable or Armstrong Cable will not receive two local television stations for most of today.

That’s because the antenna used to broadcast WKBN-TV and FOX Youngstown will be turned off so that it can be moved. The shutoff will begin around 8 a.m. and should last about 12 hours. It should be back on by 8 p.m., said Gary Coursen, news director for the stations.

A crew is going to remove the 4,000-pound analog antenna from the top of the tower, lower it to the ground, and mount the 3,000-pound digital antenna in its place, he said.

Armstrong and Time-Warner customers will have no disruption in service because the cable networks are fed their signal through fiber-optic lines before it reaches the tower, according to a statement from WKBN. The two companies serve the vast majority of Mahoning Valley cable customers.

But viewers who watch the stations through antenna, satellite or other cable subscribers will not be able to receive them today.

It’s the final step for WKBN-TV and FOX Youngstown to complete the transition to digital broadcasting. WKBN and all television stations switched to digital broadcasting in June as part of the national transition mandated by Congress.

The digital antenna had been temporarily mounted on the side of the tower, about 200 feet below the top. The tower is 1,432 feet high.

“This project to relocate the digital antenna to the top of the tower is part of our FCC license requirement,” said Coursen. “We have been operating off a temporary exemption to transmit from the side mount. Now that time is up and we have to put the antenna where it belongs. The antenna currently on top is the analog model, which we quit using on June 12th.”

Coursen said the project was supposed to have been done weeks ago, but inclement weather kept the crews grounded. Even today’s project is dependent on weather conditions.

“Brisk winds, always worse aloft, [could] postpone the move again. ... Wind adds a great deal of ‘load’ on something dangling over the side, making it in effect much heavier than it actually is,” said Coursen. “So we have our fingers crossed.”

The tower is rigged with a means of lifting and lowering equipment, he added.

After the digital antenna is mounted at the top, there should be a slight improvement in signal, but only viewers in fringe or marginal reception areas will see a difference, said Coursen.