will TV stations such as CBS2 or ABC7 change their slogans when they turn to all digital broadcasts in 2009?
these are slogans with powerful brand name associations among the viewing public. often, we cannot even identify a tv station by its call letters. in all marketing, a familiar brand name is so very important for a successful product.
so when KABC in los angeles moves from analog channel 7 to digital channel 53 in february, will they keep their well-known ABC7 brand, go to ABC53, or simply KABC?
just being curious and snoopy about how this transition is being handled across the country.... here's a listing of new channel numbers.... http://www.fcc.gov/oet/dtv/start/dtv2-69.txt
R T2008-12-09T19:34:33Z
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Good question!
Actually that was the exact argument posed by TV stations very early in the rollout. So, the FCC decided (an put into law), that a station's displayed digital channel number must be the same as their analog channel number, no matter what physical channel the station is using.
In the case of our station, our analog is channel 60, so our digital must be 60.1 . The physical channel 60 will be used for cellular service after February so there will never be more channel 60s, however that will still be our "brand" going forward, just so viewers will be able to identify us. The same is true for every other TV station in the country.
So "There's more to see on 23" will be the same in the digital era except it will display 23.1 on the screen. . .
Don't know about their slogans, but when you see the listings for Digital TV, you will see KABC-DT or KNBC-DT. DT, of coarse, means Digital Television. You could also see, in parenthesis, the UHF channel number that it represents, like KABC-DT (53) for the Los Angeles area. The DTV converter box will show 7-1 for KABC and any sub-channels as 7-2 and 7-3, again in the L.A. area.
As you point out, TV stations consider their "brand," as indicated by their analog channel number, to be a key element of their identity, and most if not all of them do not intend to turn loose of it.
The way they do it is this: their digital transmitter is actually on another channel frequency, UHF in almost all cases. But the digital transmitter sends out a special digital signal called PSIP that does a number of things, including telling your tuner what channel number to display.
Here's an example from my local area: our PBS channel has been on 6 forever. Its digital channel is actually transmitting on 53.1. But its PSIP signal makes everyone's tuner dispaly "6.1." To further confuse the issue, on February 17th they're moving their digital channel from the temporary slot at 53.1 to a new permanent frequency of 9.1. But PSIP will still tell tuners to display "6.1." The "brand" is thereby preserved.
Things really get strange, though, when the PSIP equipment at the station fails!
any television station can change over at any time. Feb replaced into merely the date they initially informed surely everyone to get waiting. needless to say, it is now in June. yet all stations can change at any time. it is unlike surely everyone did no longer have sufficient time to get their converter bins.