Reception Reports: Return Of Rochester! (April 13, 2009) Part 1

Last Monday (April 13, 2009) I experienced another "big burst" of Rochester! It started off a little after 7:30pm when 21-1 WXXI started to come in. Then, bit by bit, each Rochester digital station began to flutter in. (The signals were so strong at times that I even got a "Poor Signal Quality" showing on channel 54 - too weak to lock on or show the PSIP info, but was most likely WSTM from Syracuse!) Here is Part 1 of a 2 part blog documenting the Return Of Rochester on April 13, 2009! So sit back, and imagine you're on a personally guided "channel surf" through all the Rochester stations with me!

Things were looking solid on all three WXXI digital channels, as pictured below.

Not much later, 31-1 WUHF began to come in, though the signal was fluctuating and took awhile to become solid. Below is a pic from Fox's House.

Below, 24's President (Cherry Jones) looks like she's getting a headache from all the pixellating that's taking place on WUHF.

I know that We Shall Remain: American Experience (on WXXI) is a very serious look at the somewhat bleak history of Native Americans. Yet, I couldn't help but think that the hunky guy below was doing the infamous "Baywatch run" up from the beach.

Then at 10pm, I was excited to catch WUHF's newscast! I mentioned in my last Reception Report that I found it intriguing that many Fox stations air a news report (compared to Buffalo's WUTV which doesn't.) Below are several pics of the broadcast.

And guess which city pops up on the WUHF weather map below? Toronto!!!

When they got to a different weather map to show the "Afternoon Highs", they showed temperatures, but the only city with an actual name was Rochester. I'm guessing that the 43 at the edge of Lake Ontario is Toronto.

Below is a sweet, wacky commercial for Rochester's Midas locations which superimposes a local family onto the screen. As much as I make fun of local commercials, they really do show off the "flavour" of a city, and I'm always won over by their inherent cheesiness.

Then, back from commercials, you get knocked over the head with the swirling FOX First At Ten logo, which jumps on screen, and slides up to the centre. There's a tiny Wikipedia-esque entry at the bottom right of the screen about Rochester which appears when the FOX logo shifts upward. (You can sort of see it hiding behind the graphic at the bottom right.)

Matt Molloy was on deck to tell us about Airport Security.

The end of the newscast wouldn't be complete without a mention of Obama's new dog, fabulously dressed in a rainbow lei.

Then, WUHF moved on to Sports Extra, which featured a story about tickets to the Buffalo Bills games in Toronto going down in price. (Click here for those pics.)

WXXI wanted viewers to know that registration is now open for their upcoming auction!

Later on, just after 12:30am, WHEC's signal started to float in. I got to catch some of Jimmy Fallon that evening.

And when WHEC started coming in, I also checked their Weather Plus channel on 10-2 and saw that Toronto is now a part of their weather map!!!

The WHEC Weather Plus channel also showed a few wacky animated commercials featuring animals! The first had talking fish jumping around to promote H2O Hero (something to do with water preservation.) The second was had some cute, crudely drawn animals to promote an organization called - wait for it - Pet Peeves!

When I checked back on 21-1 WXXI, I was once again amazed to see it peak at 92% signal strength during the Tavis Smiley show. WXXI really is one of the strongest and most consistent signals coming out of Rochester.

10-1 WHEC is willing to promote Last Call With Carson Daly, but what they don't mention in the promo is that he'll be bumped to 4am after an infomerical, NBC's Poker After Dark, and a repeat of Jay Leno.

On 10-1 WHEC, Jimmy Fallon was speaking via satellite with Chris Kattan (who was in Mumbai, India.)

Over on 21-1 WXXI, they remind us that the DTV Transition has been extended to June 12th!

And on 21-3 WXXI-C, Queen Latifah has a visit with Elmo!

And the pic below shows what usually happens at 1:35 on 10-1 WHEC. They routinely bump Carson Daly for infomercials. A few weeks ago, he was delayed for the NuWave Oven. This night, he was bumped for an SMC commercial.

Speaking of infomercials, I switched over to 31-1 WUHF just in time to see one of my FAV American Idol singers, Kimberley Locke! She was there to promote the In Styler "rotating iron" which is supposed to be great for straightening hair. The second pic shows Dean Banowetz, who is apparently the "master stylist" from American Idol. (So that explains how he got La Locke to do the infomercial...) He styles all the hair in the commercial, but I don't know if he actually created the iron itself (though they do show his pic when they throw up the address and phone number to order it.)

That's all for Part 1, stay tuned to TV Garth and click here to continue on to Part 2 of the Return Of Rochester!