WCAU NBC10 Phila Analog Shutdown

Taped at 12:01 June 12, 2009. Not sure of what they thought they shut down at first, but it wasn't the Channel 10 transmitter!

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People & Blogs

Tags:

• WCAU
• NBC10
• Phila
• Analog
• Shutdown

[johnissoevil]

I'm curious, how did WTXF shut down? Did they do it quietly? I know their sister cluster in New York, WNYW and WWOR, just shut off their transmitters without any kind of ceremony.

[joewdial]

I Tivo'ed WTXF off cable, so I didn't see the signal go off the air. They had one of their female reporters push the button, turning off their analog transmitter, and then showed a snowy portable TV with rabbit ears, proving they were down. Took 2 minutes tops.

[jaybee1973jaybee]

It was nice of WCAU-TV to "go out" with a live shot of the switch being turned off, but I guess that a shut down isn't necessarily instantaneous. I would have preferred some on-the-air discussion of WCAU-TV's history, but perhaps that would require too much discussion of CBS, including the decades when CBS owned and operated the station.

[joewdial]

Thanks for the view, jaybee1973. Phila is very rich in TV history, and WCAU is no exception. I would love to see a retrospective program on the station - I grew up with it and remember a lot of CBS and local shows on it. Part of the memory is that 10 was hard to receive with an antenna.

[SpeakerFreak95]

@johnissoevil lol

[SpeakerFreak95]

is that a watchman? we still have 3 analog channels! lol

[denelson83]

They shut down their old UHF digital transmitter first. WCAU's digital signal changed channels at the switch, from UHF 67 to UHF 34 (since television signals had to vacate all channels above UHF 51 after the switch). That's what required people to re-scan their digital TV receivers.

[johnissoevil]

Yep.  Although I wouldn't agree with Sue Serio saying that Bugs Bunny was "The Spongebob of its day." We all know, Bugs would wipe the floor with Spongebob.

[DoubleMiz]

They actually did a nice retrospective with clips of shows they used to air, including Jem, which I grew up with just before school back in the day, haha.

[harleykman]

WGAL8 in nearby Lancaster didn't do anything. At midnight the signal just went to snow.

Of course they've been running an hour-long 60th Anniversary special, so I guess they felt they already did "retrospective" thing.

Most stations didn't do anything outstanding. The best was KDKA in Pittsburgh with a 10-minute long goodbye.

[johnissoevil]

Yeah, I did see that on their website yesterday. I guess the Murdoch cluster shut downs were left up to the General Managers of the stations.

[johnissoevil]

Good point on the CBS thing. Or maybe they feared that the now-CBS owned KYW might have a shit fit about their network being mentioned on another station, past CBS ownership of 10 notwithstanding.