Reception Reports: Return Of Rochester! (April 13, 2009) Part 2

Last Monday (April 13, 2009) I experienced another "big burst" of Rochester! It started off a little after 7:30pm with WXXI and eventually all Rochester digitals came in as the night went on. This is Part 2 documenting the "Return Of Rochester" at my home on April 13, 2009! (Click here if you missed Part 1.) So sit back, and imagine you're on a personally guided "channel surf" through all the Rochester stations with me! This entry picks up a bit after 2am.

So I was continuing my antenna surfing, and was watching 31-1 WUHF Fox Rochester, and noticed that they air a lot of Public Service Announcements. The one captured below is for the Shriners Hospital For Children.


Meanwhile, 10-1 WHEC was running Poker After Dark (after they skipped Carson Daly to air an infomercial.) I remember the days in the late 80s and early 90s when the Rochester affiliates would do a better job following the network schedule than the Buffalo stations!

I flipped back to 31-1 WUHF just in time to catch this totally over the top Diva glare from an actress known simply as "Sicily". (Pause for an Estelle Getty flashback.) Sicily stars on the sitcom One On One.

In my last Rochester report, I noticed that Fox Rochester sponsors a "Green Student Of The Month." The ad below features the current student of the month, Khari Thompson.

At this point, 13-1 WHAM and 13-2 CW-WHAM started to drift in, though they were rife with pixellation at first, as you can see in the pic below of Divorce Court on 13-2 CW-WHAM.

In the last Rochester report, I was surprised to see a hilarious Trojan commercial for a "fingertip massager" pop up on 31-1 WUHF. Here is the same commercial making an appearance as 8-1 WROC's signal begins to come in!


And there was more PSA fun with Fox 31! This time Sean Astin promotes the Boys Town National Hotline. (This was funny to me, because one of my close friends visited a totally different type of "Boys Town" in Chicago recently.)


Then it was time for Bernie Mac to pop up on 31-1 WUHF!


Over on 10-2 WHEC-DT, they were running a promo for Live With Regis And Kelly as the Buffalo weather popped up on screen.


I was checking off and on to see if I was picking up any other digital stations that I don't regularly get and found 26-1 / 26-2 WNYB from Jamestown, NY coming in! (Though technically not a Rochester station, it is pretty far away, and it's Lucille Ball's hometown!) Watching TCT is sort of a guilty pleasure for me. I don't like making fun of religion, per se, but the wacky way that TCT tries to get across their messages can be pop culture gold. (One episode of "Rejoice" showed pringles on people's shoulders to represent the "chips on your shoulder" that hold you back in life!)


Check out the Britney Spears' type wireless mic the host is rockin' in the pic below, along with the futuristic set of TCT Today!


I'm guessing the host below (on Rejoice) is trying to explain that you need to get "plugged in" to the Bible? (This is one of the examples of their "literal" metaphors!)


Then, over on 21-1 WXXI, Scott Fybush is there to help us get "plugged in" to digital television in a "DTV Minute" on the station.


It's now 4am, and 10-1 WHEC finally gets around to showing Last Call With Carson Daly.


Meanwhile, over on 31-1 WUHF, the George Lopez show features special guest star Jerry Springer.



On 13-1 WHAM, ABC World News Now was covering the big story that day, which was about the American captain being rescued from sea pirates.


And over on 8-1 WROC, they wanted to let us know that CBS Cares! (Followed by another CBS Cares ad for Ed Equity.)


When 5am rolled around, I was bleary eyed but determined to get shots of 8-1 WROC's morning newscast (which had eluded me during the last "Big Burst of Rochester.") Of course that's precisely when the signal got shaky and started pixellating again.


The signal started to get steadier again as the newscast progressed, and they covered a story about ATM scams.


Then, while surfing around, I checked out WPXJ, Channel 51 from Batavia, NY. I was getting a strong analog signal, with some multipathing, and they were showing an atrocious infomercial for something called "ExtenZe" in the guise of a talk show called "Sex Talk." Take four of the most vapid women you can round up, get them talking about male "size" in the most juvenile and catty manner possible, then flash to a handsome doctor who explains that ExtenZe can help you with your problems and roll out the phone number!


I needed to cleanse my pop culture palette after that trashy infomercial, and so I found my recently discovered sitcom gem Half & Half over on 31-1 WUHF!


During commercial breaks on Half & Half I channel surfed and saw this wacky stage performance over on 21-2 WXXI-W (PBS World cuts over to Classic Arts Showcase programming for 6 hours at 12am each night.) This featured a Shirley Temple-esque girl surrounded by GIANT creepy doll-like replicas of herself dancing around at left. Strangely mesmerizing stuff, especially at 5:25 in the morning.


Back on 31-1 WUHF, I caught a commercial for a contest to win tickets to the circus, and saw that it was sponsored by both WUHF and WROC! After doing some digging (coughWikipediacough) I found out that they are, indeed, sister stations and both have ties to the well promoted Rochester Homepage.


At 5:30, WUHF ran another episode of Half & Half. My Reception Report wouldn't be complete without at least one Diva glare from Telma Hopkins!


I also caught a commercial on WUHF promoting the top 7 contestants left on American Idol and I took pics of my three faves, Anoop, Allison, and Adam. (The Triple A, if you will.)


Below are a few pics from both 10-1 WHEC's News 10NBC Today, as well at 13-1 WHAM's 13WHAM News This Morning.


I love the shot of WHEC's Rebecca Leclair below, where her expression reads "Ugh, I'm so done with taxes, aren't you?" The snap after this shows off the WHEC web address.


Take a look at the stock market name at the bottom of the pic below. Harris Corp is a company I'd invest in Annie-time (inside joke....)


When 10-1 WHEC got to their weather report, I was quite excited to see Toronto prominently represented on their map! Whoo!


If you've got a birthday announcement and want it to show up on 13-1 WHAM, make note of the addresses below.


8-1 WROC, like many other stations at this time, promotes that the DTV Transition will be taking place June 12, 2009.

13-1 WHAM does a live interview at Dallywater's Tea Room And Art Gallery. Note the logo in the bottom right corner is for CW-WHAM. The logo alternates back and forth between 13 WHAM, and CW-WHAM during the show, as the newscast is carried on both stations.

Over on WROC, meteorologist Brian Neudorff gives the scoop on temperatures for the Lake Ontario towns just prior to the 6am newscast starting. (The second pic is from the start of the 6am newscast with a great shot of the WROC station ID with an 8 logo spinning in the background.)

I finally got a shot of the WROC weather map from their 6am newscast, and was once more excited to see Toronto get represented! (Along with a few other Canadian cities, including Barrie, Hamilton, Peterborough, and Kingston!)

I watched a bit more of WHEC's newscast before finally going to bed, and thought it was funny that their ticker was sponsored by Cellino & Barnes. They're everywhere in Western New York!!! I didn't really pay attention to the story about Rochester's gas prices, but recently read that Toronto's should be stable throughout the Summer.

And this concludes my report on the "Return Of Rochester" on April 13, 2009. Stay tuned to TV Garth for more Reception Reports in the future!

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!

TV History: Eaton's 1949 AD Selling TVs In Toronto Star

When I was doing some research on Toronto Star's excellent Pages Of The Past, I discovered many cool advertisements and OTA TV information, as it was when TV was just beginning to gain a more widespread audience in the late 1940s, through the 1950s. Here is an ad from Eaton's, promoting a General Electric TV set with the help of Buffalo's WBEN (later WIVB). This was seen January 13, 1949.

TV History: 1956 OTA Article In Toronto Star

Below is an article from the August 27, 1956 edition of the Toronto Star. TV columnist Gordon Sinclair writes about his Over-The-Air experiences in 1956 in Toronto! It's interesting in that it doesn't sound too different from the OTA discussions of today where OTA enthusiasts try to achieve the best reception of digital signals. In the article, Gordon is writing about getting a setup to receive WBUF, an early attempt to see if a UHF NBC affiliate could provide competition for ABC & CBS (which were on VHF at the time.) WBUF was on Channel 17 only a few years before it became the well known PBS station, WNED. Read more about WBUF by clicking here.

CanCon In The US: American Tim Hortons Winner

Buffalo's WIVB featured a quick report on March 18, 2009 about someone who won a car via the Tim Hortons "Roll Up The Rim" contest. I loved the Tim Hortons coverage, but it became TV gold when they showed the winner with a life sized dancing Tim Hortons cup. It was also funny to hear anchor Jacquie Walker sound vaguely puzzled as she announced he'd won the "Roll up...the...rim contest".

CanCon In The US: WUHF Talks Bills In Toronto

I was already excited to catch the Fox Rochester newscast on 31-1 WUHF, but even more excited when they showed Toronto in their story about the ticket prices for Buffalo Bills games in Toronto going down! These pics are from the April 13, 2009 newscast.

CanCon In The US: WGRZ shows Rogers Centre

Even though it pains me to call it the "Rogers Centre" (in my mind it will always be the SkyDome) it was neat to see it shown on Buffalo's WGRZ 2-1. Though much of their reporting leans towards paranoia about how many Buffalo Bills games are being held in Toronto. This report (I believe) was about lower ticket prices for Bills games in Toronto.