Vacation Reception Reports: Santa Maria, CA Part 2 (March 24-25, 2010)

Greetings TV Garth readers! This is Part 2 of my coverage of the over the air TV I observed in both Las Vegas, NV and Santa Maria, CA during a family vacation last month. Click here to read Part 1. This entry is all about Santa Maria and includes my visits to stations KCOY and KSBY!

In the first entry about my trip I totally forgot to mention the amazing antenna I saw a few streets away from my Grandma's house. I did some investigative research and found out it belongs to this Ham Radio enthusiast. Take a gander at this baby:



March 24 (Santa Maria, CA):

My Grandma knew I was itching to visit Radio Shack (I was hoping to pick up a new antenna during the vacation.) So we went there and I bought a moderately sized UHF antenna. I initially wasn't going to buy it, since I've been looking for a better VHF antenna to add to my collection. But it was $34.99 and looked neat, plus I was hoping to pull in Santa Barbara's KEYT (which became more of a goal throughout the week, despite being a relatively paltry 35 air miles away from my Grandma's house.) Below is the antenna, assembled and hanging off one of Grandma's brooms at the top of her garden.



My Grandma also surprised me by taking me to visit Santa Maria's CBS station, KCOY! I had printed out the directions to the station and hoped to visit, but had no idea my Grandma was already planning on taking me there. (I guess she figured I liked the station after seeing me leap in front of her TV to take pictures of it...heh...) KCOY also runs Santa Maria's FOX affiliate, KKFX-CA, which is a low powered analog station and the digital subchannel of KCOY. (The FOX 11 branding comes from the station's cable position.)



I went inside and asked about station tours. There was an awesome, friendly receptionist who gave me contact info for a station employee that arranges tours. (Unfortunately, they were short staffed that week, so no tours were being done.) The receptionist was also able to take some pics of me inside the station's lobby, which made my day! She said a lot of people like to pose with the FOX American Idol banner.



I also wasn't COY about asking her to take a pic of me with the KCOY carpet!



When I was leaving the station I noticed one of their news trucks outside!



Across the street was the Santa Maria office of KSBY, the NBC affiliate based in San Luis Obispo.



I happily posed with their office logo.



I was also excited to find one of their Action News vehicles!



The action back at my Grandma's place included seeing trashy court shows en Español via KPMR's Telefutura subchannel 38-2!



After assembling and attaching my new Radio Shack antenna to a broom (as seen earlier this post) I was finally able to capture Santa Barbara's KEYT! I thought it was funny that in Markham I can pick up Buffalo stations pretty regularly at 87-92 miles away, but in Santa Maria a station 35 miles away was an elusive goal. Heh... It was still exciting for me to finally get it, though!



I spotted Tracy Lehr's bold sense of retro fashion during the KEYT news!



The gang problem in Santa Maria - not so funny. The graphic used by KEYT in their story about it - hilarious!



Later that evening, I watched the American Idol results show on KCOY's subchannel 12-2. I normally see this at home too, but this time I got to vote! Crystal Bowersox for the win! I found it more torturous to watch in real-time, though. Even the KCOY receptionist said she had it taped on her DVR when I told her I'd watched the previous night's ep. Seriously....the DVR makes it so much easier to speed through the show's gratuitous filler.



Here's KCOY's news set shown during the FOX 11 10pm newscast.



I also surfed some of the low powered analog stations that night, and stumbled across what I think is Santa Maria's K46GF (which is a repeater for Los Angeles' KWHY, a Spanish language independent station.) The man below was offering guidance, and he'd probably hate me for wanting to go into a confessional booth with him for all the wrong reasons.



It was much easier to identify Santa Maria's KPXA-LP on Channel 49 with the station ID running across the screen. They're a TVA affiliate, which appears to be the Tele Vida Abundante network.



March 25 (Santa Maria, CA):

I really enjoyed seeing this host on KPMR's subchannel LATV on 38-3. (Nope...no cabin fever at all during this vacation....)



During March Madness I was rooting for Syracuse! Funnily enough, I felt like Syracuse was my "home team" since I watched Syracuse's WSYR a lot during last Summer's tropo season.



Even in California I couldn't escape Canadian phenom Justin Bieber. The one thing that does make me smile is that the phrase "Bieber Fever" makes me think of a raunchy joke Margaret Cho made during one of her comedy tours.



The Santa Maria news was covering the town hall meeting about gang violence being held at the Abel Maldonado Community Youth Center. Oddly enough I took a pic of that building earlier in the week when my family and I ate at the nearby Ambrosia restaurant. The upside down Ice Cream cone on the building looked interesting to me.




It was nice to see Santa Maria wasn't immune to wacky commercials, as seen in the ad for Johnboy's Towing below. Even some commercials in Las Vegas had loopy animated cars...is this becoming a trend?



What better time is there to run a commercial for Diamond Adult World than during a rerun of The Office? They advertised "casual wear for guys and gals" because the first place that pops into my mind when I think casual wear is an adult superstore.



I used to think of Santa Maria as the sleepy little town that my Grandma lived in until I took a look at these scary stats about gang violence! Eeeks! I was having flashbacks to when I saw Detroit's news last Summer.



KCOY's Adam Racusin was reporting live from the Ice Cream Cone building...er...I mean, the Abel Maldonado Community Youth Center!



Dr. Joseph Centeno was my Grandma's surgeon! My family has his card on our fridge here at home! The ad he appeared in was for the Marian Medical Center.



This was an ad for Santa Maria's Nissan Mazda dealer, which I didn't get a pic of, but I did get a pic of Edwards Cinemas which is right next to it and mentioned in the ad!




During the sports report, KSBY's Andrew Masuda (pictured below on the right) was bantering with Tony Cipolla about a baseball team's performance and said "I forgot how hard they could pound it." I bet that's not the first time they've heard that one!



That concludes the Santa Maria leg of my vacation coverage. Stay tuned to TV Garth for the final chapter in my over the air vacation adventures, because what happens in Vegas...ends up on TV Garth!

Vacation Reception Reports: Las Vegas, NV and Santa Maria, CA Part 1 (March 20-23, 2010)

Greetings TV Garth readers! This post is long overdue, but last month I went on a family vacation to both Las Vegas, NV and Santa Maria, CA. Along with the usual travel essentials, I packed two antennas and a digital converter box so I could experiment with over the air reception during the trip. The antennas I brought were my homemade rabbit ears, and the CM4040 Indoor-tenna. The box was a new Magnavox digital converter that I bought specifically as a "throw around" box, since the Zenith DTT901 is a DXing treasure and I don't want to risk damaging it. (In fact, using the Magnavox box during the trip also showed me that any box without a signal meter makes it much tougher to "hunt" for stations. However, it does work well and has great picture quality.)

The trip began with a flight from Toronto to Las Vegas, where we stayed in the Hampton Inn for one night before heading on to Santa Maria, CA for a few days to visit my Grandma, and ending back at Las Vegas to close the week. The flight was slightly ahead of schedule, and we made it to the Hampton Inn just before the 11pm news. Within minutes my antenna was out, the Magnavox digital box was plugged in, and surprisingly Hampton Inn had flat screen TVs in their rooms! (This trip also pointed out that it's trickier to get good pics of OTA TV reception from CRT televisions!)

March 20 (Las Vegas, NV):



Oh deer....KVBC's subchannel 3-2 ("Untamed Sports") was airing a show called Deer Camp. Surprisingly, it's not a peppy musical where Disney's hottest teens befriend a magical deer that helps them put on a show. This Camp involves the killing of these fine animals!



However, the show still attracted Lindsay Lohan to let people know what Camp-ing is all about with a rugged hunting daddy! (Wait...that's not Lindsay?)



I knew I was in Vegas when I saw a naked man running around on a PBS subchannel (10-3 KLVXSD2). He was tastefully censored with a giant blur, though.



Also letting me know I was in Vegas? KVBC's report on sex trafficking in the city! Oh my heavens. How young you talkin', indeed....



I was a bundle of nerves until Blake McCoy's handsome mug popped up on 13-1 KTNV's news!



KTNV does a segment called Postively Las Vegas, and I was positively enjoying their OTA TV at this point! (Interestingly, Las Vegas is one of the few markets where most of their major digital stations are on VHF.)



Weatherman Jerry Brown was over on KVBC with a familiar backdrop on Las Vegas news sets - a montage of the Vegas strip. I'm still torn about whether it looks totally fabulous, or a tad too gaudy.



KTNV sidesteps this issue by using a sleek, modern set, and occasionally putting up the Vegas strip scenery on a screen in the background.



March 21 (Santa Maria, CA):

We arrived in Santa Maria the next day, and I was just as quick to set up the antenna and digital box. March madness was in full swing via Santa Maria CBS affiliate 12-1 KCOY! I still remember KCOY (and NBC station KSBY) from all the times I've visited my Grandparents since I was a kid.



Here's KCOY's Arturo Santiago in a promo for the station! (I would actually visit them later in the week!)



Great logo shot of KCOY!



Connie Miller is not only a cancer survivor, but she knows how to rock a fluorescent purple wig!



This kid is unwittingly the poster child for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution in a commercial for the wonderfully named Fatte's Pizzas!



I had an awesome co-worker named Lauris, so this ad for Laurus College reminded me of him. (Or as I'd like to think of it, they needed to school people with his awesomeness!)



Ad for the Santa Maria Utilities Dept, with their iconic "All America City" sign followed by one of my shots of the sign during my trip!




I certainly pondered many things about KCOY's cute weatherman P.J. Javaheri. Below is a shot of him during the "P.J. Ponders" segment, where he discusses the dry spell in Santa Maria (something I could really relate to...)



One really cool OTA channel they had in Santa Maria was 29-1 KQMM-LD, an MTV affiliate of sorts. They call themselves MTV Tres and broadcast bilingual programming from MTV. They would show popular programs and subtitle them in whatever language was not being spoken. (For example, the English language shows would be subtitled in Spanish, and vice versa.)



March 22 (Santa Maria, CA):

It would be great if this guy's answer started with "Love..."



Despite being back in the "closet" around my Grandma during this vacation, there were numerous gay references in pop culture that found me during the trip. Below is a scene from a show on KQMM-LD (MTV Tres) where a gay couple adds a third to their relationship, and after much drama, adds a fourth to balance everyone out!



There was also local news en Espanol via 33-1 KTAS, pictured below. (The only OTA Spanish language station I've picked up at home is Cleveland's WQHS, and I don't think they broadcast local news.)



March 23 (Santa Maria, CA):

Ellen promo on San Luis Obispo's NBC station KSBY. (They had a Santa Maria office, which I visited later that week.)



By now you can probably tell I was fan of KQMM-LD. Here we have some Latin hunks with tight shirts, tight jeans, and infinite wisdom in their chat below!



I was surprised that there were quite a few analog stations still up and running in the Santa Maria and Central Coast area in California. Below is K16FC, which is a San Luis Obispo based translator for Los Angeles' PBS station KCET.



I bought a 50 foot cable wire at Best Buy during the trip so I could test my antennas outside! I tried my trusty home made rabbit ears at the top of my Grandma's garden, seen in the pic below.



With the rabbit ears outside, I picked up one Santa Barbara station that I couldn't pick up from inside the house: 38-1 KPMR, a Univision affiliate. However, none of my antennas at this point could pick up Santa Barbara's ABC station KEYT.



One of the subchannels of KPMR was 38-3 "LATV" showing the fabulous program "El Glam Show" below. (See what I mean about gay references finding me, even in small town America...)



KSBY's news featured my California based namesake below. This Garth's last name is eerily similar to mine!



Here is the KSBY news set, along with their slogan "Balanced News You Can Trust."



That concludes Part 1 of my Vacation Reception Report on over-the-air TV from Las Vegas, NV and Santa Maria, CA. Stay tuned to TV Garth for Part 2, which chronicles my visit to both KCOY and KSBY! (Well, KSBY was more of a "stand in front of the sign and pose" but it's still a visit in my books!)