Reception Reports: The Big Burst Of Rochester (March 24, 2009) Part 2

This is the second part chronicling what I've dubbed the "Big Burst Of Rochester." This "historic" night (March 24, 2009) is named as such because all of the available Rochester, NY digital signals came in pretty strong in my area for about five hours. So, naturally, I stayed up all night watching them, channel surfing, and taking pics! So without further ado, the Big Burst continues on (from about 2am-5am) featuring my commentary along with the pics in their chronological order.

The night continued (it was now approx 2am) and I struck commercial GOLD when I saw an ad for Home Comfort Heat on 13-1 WHAM. A woman with puffed up hair looks directly into the camera and begins to SING about how high her energy bills are! I've already included this in my Crazy Commercials section, so click here to see that blog entry, or just go straight to the Home Comfort Heat website to see the commercial. I actually laughed out loud when I first saw it!

At this point I did a quick check of signal strength and was astounded when I saw that 21-1 WXXI was coming in at 92% strength for me! That lady on the right looks happy and delighted for me.

Below, we have our second vaguely inappropriate commercial of the night. I know it's 2:28am, but it still amuses me that FOX Rochester thinks that King Of The Hill is the perfect time to advertise the Pos-T-Vac. Watch the commercial on You Tube by clicking here. This is essentially a glorified "penis pump" which makes it even more awkwardly hilarious when the on screen text exclaims "Use as often as you like!" It's supposed to be an aid for men who, er, need a little "help" and don't take viagra? But then, if they can use this as often as they like, will they even need their partners anymore?

31-1 WUHF (FOX) also wanted to arouse interest in their HDTV channel, which is available for free on Time Warner Cable in the US. (Or free over-the-air, the way I was watching it that night!)

I also did a check on the signal strength of WHEC, and 10-1 and 10-2 were showing up with roughly a 61% signal. (Pretty strong, coming from Rochester and given my setup, where the antenna's not even directly outside.)

Back on WUHF 31-1, King Of The Hill gave way to another sitcom, and the pic below illustrates why many people would want to go One On One with this gentleman.

Then all of sudden, another guy runs in wearing a dress (as part of a hazing) which only adds to the fabulousness of a show that features built guys in tank tops! Go FOX Rochester!

13-1 WHAM's signal was breaking up slightly again, but I tried to capture this "Go Red" campaign commercial which promotes the American Heart Association, and features nifty logo shots of WHAM and CW-WHAM!

The signal on 13-1 WHAM stabilized enough for me to get a shot of a promo for a website feature they call "WHAM-Cam Timesaver Traffic." How can you not love something called the "WHAM-Cam"? It's like, "WHAM Bam, Thank You Cam!"

Over on 31-1 WUHF, I saw the same Tim Hortons commercial from earlier in the evening, and caught a snap of their main logo! Go Tim Hortons in Rochester! Their US advertising is starting to become almost as ubiquitous as their Canadian commercials.

Then over on 13-1 WHAM at this time, there was a commercial for Direct Buy's Rochester division. Direct Buy advertises their Canadian wing heavily (especially on CBLT late at night) so it was neat to see the Rochester variant of those ads.

I'm pretty sure the pic below was also from 13-1 WHAM, and I snapped it because it was for Pride 2008! Not sure if this is in any way similar to the Pride festivities I attend every June in Toronto, but from what I've read online, Rochester is fairly gay friendly. But what makes this ad sort of odd is that it's promoting Pride 2008, even though we're well into 2009. And I'm still curious what sort of Pride they were promoting. Gay Pride, or Livingston County Tourism Pride? A glance at the Livingston County website turned up nothing. I suppose I'll have a field day trying to figure this out.

I seem to be on a big WHAM kick, but there were so many commercials, so little time! Here's their promo for Oprah. Not too long after this ad for her show, they showed HER ad for the DTV Transition. Check out my blog entry about that ad by clicking here.

Over on 10-1 WHEC at 3am, they were showing a repeat of the previous week's Jay Leno episode, featuring guest Betty White! (It is interesing to note that Buffalo's WGRZ forgoes this repeat of Jay Leno and runs infomercials in this timeslot, rather than bumping Carson Daly to 4am as WHEC does.)

Below we have a commercial promoting the Girl Scouts, Goodwill, plus WHAM and CW-WHAM all at the same time!

I can't help it! Just one more WHAM pic for the time being....this one capturing a nice shot of their logo and channel number! (Compare with the one featured in the Main Channel Guide.)

Then FOX Rochester was promoting a "Green" initiative that would reward a lucky person with a full scholarship to Finger Lake's Community College. No relation to Trojan's "finger massager" as seen in Part 1 of this blog entry.

It was unusual to see that 31-1 WUHF (FOX) was promoting a Weather Line, as Buffalo's WUTV had me convinced that FOX stations never carried newscasts. According to Wikipedia, that's due to WUTV targeting their Canadian audience with sitcoms rather than Buffalo news. (Though way back in the day, when I was a kid, circa 1985-ish, I seem to remember they had something called INN News?) Other FOX stations, like WUHF, do carry newscasts.

WUHF also promotes "Frugal Fridays", which would be handy if you won that scholarship to Finger Lake's Community College and needed to save money for other essentials

And here, finally at 4am, we get to Carson Daly on 10-1 WHEC! It was actually a very cool episode, where Carson made a point of visiting one of the very few independent record stores left in the US. He visits Ameoba Records in California and was showing the audience the cool selections of records, tapes and CDs, which made me sigh with nostalgia for the times when I'd hit up record stores looking for hot songs and remixes. (Especially here in Toronto, where the once-glorious Yonge St. area had HMV and Sam's, with Tower Records not far from there. Of those three, there's now just HMV.) I also wondered, how much does WHEC hate Carson that they stick an infomercial in his timeslot at 1:35, proceed with the NBC schedule at 2am with Poker After Dark, then at 3am they have a repeat of Jay Leno before finally airing his show?

Then I got to see ABC World News Now do one of those awesomely sensationalistic "undercover" investigations, this time setting up a clothing store to observe how customers would react if a black woman was racially profiled and harassed by store staff (all portrayed by actors planted in the store among the real customers.) Watch the video by clicking here. One customer got so upset by what she observed that she began crying hysterically. (This happens about halfway into the segment.) The suave ABC host rushed out to explain that it was an undercover investigation. Yet, the way he explained it was hilarious. Something like, "I'm sorry, we didn't mean to upset you this much, but unfortunately, racism does exist." All presented in a serious tone, but with that unintentionally funny subtext of, "Sorry you got punk'd, but we're doing it under the guise of combating a serious issue. We hope you understand." Then, the hosts below were discussing it. On the left was Jeremy Hubbard (I'd love to meet him and his mother, so I could say "Ah, so this is Mother Hubbard!"), and on the right is Vinita Nair. I didn't know either of their names until after this broadcast, but Vinita surprised me when she said something like, "As an Indian woman, I've experienced that kind of thing [racial profiling] where people have followed me around in stores." Was surprised (and happy) because (mini political rant follows) I've found that living in Toronto, diversity is widespread and part of what makes the city vibrant. Yet, there's very little South Asian presence in the US. So now we have an Indian woman as the co-anchor of a major network's news program, you have Anoop Desai being the first South Asian contestant on American Idol, you have Kal Penn becoming a part of Obama's staff, and it's neat to see people from lesser represented groups breaking through in the US, where diversity (at least in media) seems to exist much less than in Canada.

Meanwhile, over on FOX Rochester, Freddie Prinze Jr. and George Lopez easily caught my attention by aggressively wrestling with each other in an ep of The George Lopez Show.

My attention is also captured by an ad on WHEC that features a guy in a flamboyant red wig and outfit dancing around to promote something called "Unclaimed Freight". (That could be the name of a great Glam Rock band.)

All this flamboyance must have blown a circuit in Rochester, as WXXI (below) was experiencing technical difficulties at that time!

The signals were so strong this night that even analog 51 WXPJ (ION from Batavia, NY) was coming in very strong. Slightly fuzzy and multipathing, but otherwise very strong. And one of the rare times that they were showing a program and not an infomerical! (Unless this show was a cleverly executed infomercial for National Geographic that encourages you to sign up or pay for something from them.)

Then at 5am, I found one of my favourite new sitcom discoveries on WUHF: Half & Half! It deals with two half sisters who share the same father trying to reconnect and form a bond. It also stars Telma Hopkins of Family Matters fame!

Since 5am had rolled around, I tried switching on some of the newscasts at the time to get some logo / news shots. (I tried in vain to get a shot of WROC's newscast, but it was fading out and pixellating far too much.) The first shot is from the WHEC newscast, the second pic is a great snap of Rochester's famous Ford Street Bridge.

But even the Ford Street Bridge couldn't keep me from switching back to Half & Half on WUHF, and catching their totally Diva-tastic show opening where they all appear in fab outfits as singers with multiple costumes, flowing dresses, and oversize tresses! Catch Telma Hopkins giving a Diva glare on the left side of the second pic!

We end the evening (now morning, I suppose) at 5:04am, leaving with a shot of a Rochester traffic cam on 10-2, the WHEC NBC Weather Plus channel.

And this concludes The Big Burst Of Rochester, as witnessed on March 24, 2009! Stay tuned to TV Garth for more Reception Reports in the future!