Talk:WCGV-TV

Fox Box

When Did WCGV-TV Air Fox Kids/Fox Box? On Saturday Or Sunday?

Always on their normal days and times, M-F for the weekday lineup, Saturday for the weekend. Nate 12:09, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

In 1994

When Fox Moved To WITI In 1994, What Did WCGV Put In Its Place? Tomjerry9 22:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Early programming off

When WCGV first started, it actually did SelecTV 24/7. It was later that it switched to regular programming during the day and SelecTV at night. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 06:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

That's incorrect. You'll be able to read the story in my forthcoming book on Milwaukee TV history. SelecTV was never 24/7. In fact, that service didn't start until several months after the station went on the air. Nitelinger (talk) 15:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I had family with the service, we used to come over and watch it during the day. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 15:58, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The station went on the air on 24 March 1980. SelecTV service started in late June of that year. Initially, SelecTV was on between 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. weekdays, 2:30-4:00 p.m. on Saturdays, 2:00-4:00 p.m. on Sundays and between 7:00 p.m.-1:00 a.m. nightly. Perhaps you saw the afternoon showings. You might also be confusing SelcTV, which was a scrambled over-the-air pay TV service with TVQ, which broadcast 24/7, but required subscribers to purchase a small dish and decoding box to get HBO. It was a competitor in the market. Both disappeared once cable penetration became high. Nitelinger (talk) 03:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

No, not confusing it with TVQ, I know the difference between the two. And I'm well aware of the later schedule you describe. SelecTV as a service came on the air in '78 in three cities (including this one) according to one of the founders (who had lived in Milwaukee before heading out to LA to start up that location in '76). Maybe the discrepancy is coming from its involvement with 24. And I'm aware of your wonderful site and book, but I'm not aware what you're using as actual verifiable resources, etc. or what qualifications you have as an expert in this. Most of it appears written from a first person perspective interspersed with dates, etc. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 04:25, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

SelecTV did NOT start in Milwaukee in 1978. There was no station on which it operated, and the system required an over-the-air station. WCGV-TV did not begin broadcasting until 24 March 1980, and SelecTV began in late June. I too, interviewed the founder (probably the same one you mention). You're correct that SelcTV started in L.A. on KWHY-TV, but it did not start in MKE until June of 1980. Since you're questioning my sources (interviews, press clipping from the period, etc. -- all of which are in the notes in my forthcoming book), what are you using other than what appears to be a faulty memory? Nitelinger (talk) 06:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Questioning sources by someone claiming expertise is a standard practice on Wikipedia, not a personal attack. I suggest you maintain WP:Civility rather than shoot back personal attacks and claims on "faulty memory". You run a website (which I've enjoyed reading for some time), but again - that seems to be based on personal insight, with no previous verification on sources, etc. Just your word. That's not how Wikipedia works. And yes, I was going by interviews as well. But I don't see a point in continuing this discussion if you're going to get defensive on someone questioning your sources. Addressing the issue on this page was something I was taking out of passing interest on Wikipedia, I'm much busier in other areas here and this is low on my priority list. Have fun. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 06:24, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Further, your earlier comment re: SelecTV going on the air in three cities in 1978 appears to be a faulty extrapolation of the reference you added to the SelecTV page here on Wikipedia. Nowhere does that article say that the service started in Milwaukee that year. It started in L.A. Bob Block would've preferred to have started here in Milwaukee, but his investors (one of whom I interviewed) wanted to start in L.A. Once that station was up and running (Remember the SelecTV system needed to broadcast on an over-the-air TV station.), they then expanded to other markets including Milwaukee. Nitelinger (talk) 06:33, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't stating it was from that interview, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. That reference was added on the SelecTV page to correct the loose statement there previously that simply stated "operations" started in 1976 with no actual broadcast date listed. Like I said, no point in continuing this conversation. Especially if you're going to continue to continue to make claims about what I am or am not saying or aware of as some sort of veiled retaliation for doing a standard questioning of your sources (which you rarely add in your edits going over your editing history, and the several you have appear to have been based on WP:OR such as this one). You can't use yourself as a reference here, that includes your site, your book, interviews you've personally conducted, etc. It violates a host of policies and guidelines. Good luck with all that, this is my last posting in this discussion. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 06:44, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

So let's see: You post a statement on this talk page as fact. You cited no sources. I questioned your statement on this page. You then state that you have a personal experience watching the service. Once again I disagree. You then question not only my comments on this page, by my website in a veiled attack, which you claim is not personal. Your statement re: having seen the service is WP:OR and in my opinion based upon a faulty memory. Of course, to you, that's a personal attack and not a legitimate questioning of your statement. Fine. You have yet to provide one source to back-up your original statement. Instead, you chose to redirect the discussion away from the original question. Then you decide to run away and say that you'll no longer be posting on this discussion. Nitelinger (talk) 16:41, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

WCGV DOES Air Weekend Marketplace!

They DO Air Weekend Marketplace From 9-11AM Saturday Mornings! Just Check WCGV's Website And You'll See What I Mean! 173.30.199.69 (talk) 20:03, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Curious, haven't read your book yet, but did SelecTv have two stations on the decoder box? The other one you mentioned with TVQ actually is what my father I beleive had in Milwaukee in the eighties. What did that service run off of a a box or channel and when did it start and end it's programming for the days. Reading some of the sources online and vagly my father remembers after HBO signed off the station switched to WTBS. 20 December 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.95.6 (talk) 18:02, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

TVQ in Milwaukee

As previously noted, TVQ (affiliated with the Milwaukee Relay Company in charge of uplinking Superstation WGN throughout much of the Northland) was similar to Eastern Microwave (EMI) and United Video of Tulsa Oklahoma in that regard.

TVQ in its own right went on the air for testing shortly after Christmas, 1976 and launched officially on March 31st 1977, the same day as the WISN/WITI ABC/CBS network swap

Source 1: Interviews with First Wisconsin Building Communications and Engineering Staff on whose towers the relay was installed. Source 2: Interviews with Milwaukee Public Schools Instructional Television-Fixed Service (ITFS) engineers with whom they shared the bandwidth for the first several months.

During those early months, as previously reported, they had to share the frequency with Milwaukee Public Schools ITFS (educational classroom video beamed to schools during the day) and was only able to broadcast HBO at night and on the weekend.

For several years, this was fine, as the HBO service only ran from 4 PM to midnight-ish on most weeknights and til 2 AM on weekends.

A year later, when the ITFS moved to a different frequency and freed up the daytime hours, and Midwestern Relay picked up WGN, you would think that their TVQ partner would be filling in the time with WGN. Instead they opted for Nickelodeon, then in it's infancy and it's five-hour block of Pinwheel childrens' programming along with the Calliope childrens' show from the USA Network.

This continued until after Christmas of 1981 when HBO launched a 24-hour schedule. TVQ then switched to a 24-hour format as well. Prior to the HBO launch of daytime childrens' programming, the service was limited to family fare with the harder-edged offerings relegated to the late evening hours.

In the case of SelecTV, there was only the one channel in MILWAUKEE HOWEVER people thought there were two due to the fact that the decoder box had two settings NORMAL and SPECIAL, the latter being for e.g. pay-per-view and other events that were not part of the original package.

Where there WERE two UHF Pay TV channels (and for a brief period even three) was in neighboring Chicago. Spectrum launched on Ch 66 roughly a year after ONTV with much of the same programming, splitting the subscriber base quite heavily against ONTV.

What you are probably thinking of is the single-run of two-channel decoder boxes from Chicago that picked up both ONTV as well as SportsVision.

As ONTV and SelecTV were two different technologies, the Chicago dual tuner boxes were showing up in swapmeets and other outlets all over SE WI NE IN and SW MI and anyplace else the service was not allowed to be sold through normal channels.

Before the widespread piracy - and ramping up of home video and inroads of cable - that killed both UHF as well as microwave, the Chicago Spectrum single-channel decoders escaped to similar swapmeets in Minneapolis and vice versa to be used in a similar pirate fashion the same as TVQ.

TVQ on the other hand, with a second base of operations in Minneapolis was having ITS' retired and otherwise turned-in gear escaping to Milwaukee to be used in a pirate fashion there, the same as the Milwaukee gear would escape to Minneapolis.

The same thing was happening in Washington DC and Baltimore with SuperTV. One run of dual-tuner receivers was made for those people who lived between the two markets and could therefore claim membership in both according to the FCC.

Those escaped to other dual-city areas to have their tuning crystals replaced to be able to receive pirated signals there and vice versa.

Once all the over-the-air pay TV signals were gone by the mid 80s and these receivers started showing up in electronics recycle bins, the sheer number of out-of-area equipment in any one of the affected cities was mind-boggling.

By the time the companies got wise to the city-swapping, major electronics magazines had long since published circuit diagrams (schematics) so that all but the most beginner level of electronics technicians could build their own from commonly-available parts.

And THAT doesn't even BEGIN to tell the story of all the VHS piracy that was going on in any city that had either a microwave or UHF pay-TV franchise, although it was far worse for the microwave people since 1 their master control operations in the beginning were often housed in the basement of the school district admin building that contained the ITFS studios and 2 the duplication facilities for the school districts were often housed in the same locale.

As many stations sent 2-inch syndication masters to the stations (regardless of UHF or microwave) as backup, the night shift workers would frequently either send tapes to the school duplication centers or they'd already be there in the case of microwave.

Hundreds of VHS recorders normally used to duplicate school videos would then be used to duplicate the backup movie tapes, the results of which would then be sold at the swapmeets as `blank white label tape' with a number code which could be looked up in a book under the table of the swapmeet vendor.

Proceeds would be split back to the engineers at the stations and OCCASIONALLY to the school district itself without them knowing - which would purchase newer and better gear in addition to what the pay TV service was providing.

It wasn't until years later that the school district administrations found out what was going on - and by that time cable and DVDs had come out and the point was moot.

Years later Gnutella and Torrenting came out and everything went back to the way it was before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.218.36.228 (talk) 20:31, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 14 May 2022

• WVTV-DT2 → WCGV
• KSCC-DT2 → KXPX-LP
• KSCC-DT3 → KTOV-LP
• WICZ-DT2 → WBPN-LP
• WGFL-DT2 → WMYG-LP
• KLAX-DT2 → KWCE-LP
• WSTM-DT2 → WSTQ-LP
• WSYT-DT3 → WNYS-TV

– Per a suggestion by @Sammi Brie: at User:Sammi Brie/NCBC#Defunct stations. Articles can be rewritten as needed. Mvcg66b3r (talk) 23:30, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support as a generalization; subchannels really don't have any independent notability from their parent stations, and the articles, predominantly about the separately-licensed stations that happened to be the original on-air homes of a program lineup that migrated to a subchannel of a different (albeit usually related) station, should reflect this. My one issue — if only a very minor one — is that even under the current version of the broadcasting naming conventions, the Milwaukee station's article should actually be moved back to WCGV-TV, as that was the actual call sign. (Any nominal ambiguity with the current WCGV (FM), a Family Life Network station with no separate notability from that network, can presumably be taken care of with the existing hatnote.) --WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 00:27, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support, though the FCC calls were WCGV-TV so it should go back there. Now that we have all these Sinclair channel contract and LP moves (for the most part) finished, especially with SBG's 2021 moves of IP from shells to subs, we've pretty well established that the defunct channel history should be detailed there, with the subchannel history in its current location. Nate • (chatter) 01:33, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support as original proposer (with the first article listed being WCGV-TV with correct call sign suffix). Information on the programming after the license change should be at the article it's actually on. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 03:24, 15 May 2022 (UTC)