Local stations will join a national voluntary “soft shutdown” of over-the-air service during fringe primetime December 17 to demonstrate the upcoming loss of analog service. In reality, local TV broadcasters decided to playback at 6:58 PM a two-minute announcement regarding shutdown of analog broadcasting February 17.

Local channels 8, 10, 15, 39, 51, and 69 are due to sign-off permanently in February. Channel 6, XETV Tijuana, will participate in the demonstration to help promote viewership on the digital channel, but will not be shutting down permanently in February.

Those stations are expected to make the announcement on their analog service only, saying that viewers may be ill-prepared for the February service shutdown.The announcement, prepared locally and shared among the stations, will explain the availability of cable and satellite as well as low-cost digital converters and about where they can find information about the transition on the internet.

Of course, with Congress still considering bills to extend analog TV over-the-air service both in general and along the Mexican border, the entire exercise and recent on-air announcement series may serve only to further confuse the public.

Bill Zears at the San Diego FCC office had said that most full power analog TV stations would sign-off for five minutes on December 17, but that was rejected by local broadcast managers.

Imperial Valley big gun KSIQ (FM) 96.1 MHz in Brawley has an FCC construction permit to move its city of license and transmission facilities to Campo, and has applied to install an on-frequency booster atop Mt. San Miguel southeast of downtown San Diego. According to the technical filing, the station is planning an ERP of 125 watts using log-periodic antennas beamed west and northeast toward Chula Vista and El Cajon from Mt. San Miguel. Its city of license is given as Santee. While San Diego is not in a major lobe, it should be covered sufficiently for decent line-of-sight car reception on area mesas.

The FCC construction permit to move its city of license to Campo includes a reduction in power to 25kW with a transmitter site at water tanks overlooking Lake Morena Village.

SBE recently bestowed Certified Television Operator (CTO) status to Chapter 36 members Randy Borgwardt and Carl Reis. Tim Toole earned Life Certification as Certified Broadcast Television Engineer (CBTE). Also, Gail Pineda of TV Magic recently joined the chapter. Thanks and congratulations to you all!

In another sign of tough economic times, Lincoln Financial Media and Eric Schecter, the San Diego Market Director of Engineering have agreed to part company. Eric had come to San Diego from Phoenix in 2005 where he had worked in technical management at CBS radio. He’s served as Chapter 36 Chairman for the past two years.

Schecter oversaw a number of projects at Lincoln, including new HD Radio facilities for KSON-FM, and preparation for rebuilding the KSON-AM tower downtown. “Walking out of City Development Services with an approved Building Permit was a great accomplishment. Thanks to the many companies and individuals whose efforts will not be forgotten”.

Eric says that for the time being, he will be doing work as an independent contractor. You can contact him via email at or by calling him at 619-517-1974. That number will be good through the end of October.

Broadcasting groups have released a number of well-known broadcast engineering managers and on-air personalities lately, most notably Ira Goldstone from Tribune Television in Los Angeles. Presumably, cost is a factor.

The Federal Communications Commission issued a Forfeiture Order against KUSI (TV) San Diego for $25,000. The September 17 order relates to KUSI’s coverage of the October 2003 wildfires in which several local TV stations were accused of not providing sufficient graphical emergency information for people with hearing problems. The FCC found that some critical information was provided, but was incomplete compared with vocal information, or delayed more than 30 minutes. The agency disagreed with KUSI’s arguments that they have a "filtering" role, asking why the station was filtering information only for those unable to hear the dialog. KUSI broadcast some maps and graphical emergency information, but did not have real time closed captioning during their extended coverage of the fires.

KFMB-TV settled their Notice of Apparent Liability last March for its lack of visual emergency information during coverage of the 2003 fires with a Consent Decree in which they agreed to make a "voluntary contribution" to the US Treasury for $18,000 and have all charges dropped.

(The author is Director of Engineering for Bay City Television, the US operations company for XETV Tijuana, and was an engineer for KFMB Stations at the time of the 2003 wildfires.)