Remember when San Diego was once served by two cable companies? Southwestern Cable had the territory north of Interstate 8, and Cox Cable had the territory south of that highway. Well, now it’ll be one company.

On February 27, the FCC approved Charter Communications’ $34.5-billion purchase of Cox Communications. The combined corporation will be called Cox Communications, but the fiber and cable TV delivery service will continue to be called “Spectrum.” It’s set to become the largest internet service provider, with 38 million customers.

The two companies’ business services have been competitive over most of San Diego County for some time.

The future impact on San Diego employees is unknown.

The IPAWS RWT for the week of January 11—17 did not send correctly, so this was a true test of your EAS device.

From the FEMA:

“We discovered after the IPAWS RWT chron job launched the Monday morning IPAWS RWTs that the associated IPAWS digital certificate in use had expired. As individual EAS devices are required by FCC Rules to check CAP message digital signatures, the EAS device should have flagged the incoming RWT as expired. Let’s consider this week to be a test of EAS device security. We have replaced the expired digital certificate. Next week’s messages will be properly signed with a valid digital certificate.”

For that week, you should have received an error about the lack of certificate, or received no RWT from IPAWS at all. If you received a valid RWT, you have a validation issue. Log the exception and pat yourself on the back.

FCC rules just went into effect allowing FM stations to originate programming on boosters, effectively giving them the right to target ads to certain segments of their coverage area. The rule was approved in November 2024 but adopted in late July. 

In San Diego, Audacy’s KWFN 97.3 has a system with a main transmitter in Southeast San Diego and four independent boosters, each with HD capability. They could sell ads unique to booster coverage areas in La Jolla, Carlsbad, San Marcos, or Romona. The new rules allow up to three minutes per hour of independent broadcasting.

One limiting factor is with mobile receivers. When moving between coverage zones, a listener in an automobile would hear an ad being interrupted by a different ad. And with terrain shielding, as is likely in North County, these switches could occur frequently as one signal dominates another with movement. KWFN would have to file with the FCC to allow this operation. 

GeoBroadcast Solutions introduced the geotargeting concept, proposed the new rules, and developed the concept with several broadcasters, including KWFN. I was involved in helping to set up the boosters in 2021.  Precise timing with GPS helps to make synchronized boosters viable. Terrain helps isolate the booster from the main signal, but hills in the booster coverage area can make mobile reception tricky. Also, using boosters in a metro area like San Diego can be hindered by adjacent channel reception, especially when trying to maintain a digital HD sideband signal.