WESH is in Daytona Beach, 79.2 miles distant according to Antennaweb
(from U of F). It seems highly unlikely to me that any legal ruling
would declare WESH to be the legitimate NBC affiliate to serve the
Gainesville market.
True.
By market definition Ocala is included in the Orlando/Daytona
Beach/Melbourne market. Gainesville is a separate market. The WESH
transmitter is about midway between Orlando and Daytona Beach; 79.2
miles from Gainesville sounds about right.
What I can't figure out is who is preventing some enterprising
businessman from setting up an NBC affiliate in Gainesville. Especially
when you take must-carry and retransmission consent into account, i.e.
that the new affiliate would have access to this 93 percent usage Cox
system, this Gainesville status quo just does not make sense to me.
The Gainesville market is somewhat unique. Channel 5 (PBS) is run by the
University and has been around forever. Channel 20, WCJB (ABC) was the
first commercial net to come to town. I don't know the exact year, but
they were still struggling to make a profit when I worked for them in
the late '70s. By the mid '80s they started making significant profits,
having the only local news in the market. WOGX came into the market as
an independent then became a Fox affiliate. They tried to compete in
local news and gave up. They were purchased by meredith Broadcasting a
few years ago and are now run out of Orlando as part of a triopoly. WGFL
came next as an independent and struggled to survive, even after they
started to carry UPN and WB shows. They have never offered local news,
although, after gaining the CBS affiliation a few years ago, they
started to carry the newscasts from the new Jacksonville CBS affiliate.
Bottom line, there not much money in the proposition to operate an NBC
affiliate in this market.
And, if not a new affiliate, there are already several translators in
Gainesville. Who is paying WESH, for example, not to use one of these
translators for NBC and other content? Seems like illegal things going
on.
There are frequencies available to add another station in Gainesville.
But the economics just don't add up.
Gainesville is primarily a college town, yes? Should be plenty of
for FOTA TV in a college town, if it were available. Not every college
student is a spoiled brat, I don't think.
Not really. The University has its own cable system for the dorms ( i
think they have some kind of relationship with Cox to get access to many
of the channels. And many of the off-campus apartments now include cable
and cable modems in the price of the apartment. This is not a "poor"
college town. Lot's of daddy's money around here. We have the highest
property taxes in the state; the highest gas prices in the state; and
intense competition with the students with daddy's credit cards to get a
seat in a decent restaurant.
The only thing that these kids whimp out on is beer - Budwiser has 65%
market share.
Regards
Craig
P.S. the folks who can't afford cable mostly live in adjacent counties,
and work for the University for about $7 an hour.
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