Posts Tagged ‘Rogers’

WQLN-TV off air until Monday

August 25th, 2011 joel

It’s been a rough week for WQLN as they were affected by weekend storms that knocked off their transmission system until Tuesday. Then again this morning the digital TV transmitter went out, again due to another bad storm and didn’t want to kick back on.

Here’s the latest from their Facebook page:

From our Chief Engineer: “WQLN TV will be off the air until at least Monday. Our transmitter’s tube went bad. The tube is the most important and also most expensive part of the transmitter. We had a good run with ours though, as it was the original tube and was about 10 years old. I will keep you all updated on the progress when I know more.” If you have Time Warner or Rogers Cable, you should be getting at least channel 54.1 since that is delivered to them via fiber optic.

I guess no This Old House Hour for us antenna-only folks tonight!

Posted in Television Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment »

WQLN keeps Rogers connection

July 30th, 2009 joel

It’s going to cost more each year, but Rogers Cable in London, ON will continue to show WQLN/Erie as it’s PBS channel, according to a Mike Maciag story in today’s Erie Times-News.

Late Tuesday, Rogers agreed to keep WQLN on their system, provided that the public station now provide a fiber-optic back haul to the Canadian cable giant’s network head end in Toronto. Price tag according to the article is $30-50,000 per year.

Such an investment is worth it to better serve the London community and retain the $200,000 per year the station receives in donations. However, it is an additional cost that comes at a time of great difficulty for funding the public media property. Station officials are quoted as counting on some $250,000 in state funding to be restored when the final PA budget is passed. Gov. Rendell’s original budget had no money for public media which precipiated several layoffs and pay reductions in staff.

Posted in Television Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments »

Can QLN take another hit?

July 23rd, 2009 joel

Blazing headline in the front page of the Erie Times-News this morning: Cable loss a threat to WQLN. Online reporter Mike Maciag, quotes WQLN Public Media President Dwight Miller that if Rogers Cable in London, Ontario drops the Q in favor of a Detroit PBS station, it would put a 20% dent in the public station’s donation base.

Rogers is complaining about the quality of the WQLN digital signal, which is received over the air. The Detroit station comes in on a cable evidently from Windsor. The cost of getting a fiber-optic signal from Erie to the Rogers headend would be costly.

Meanwhile QLN is dealing with the loss of $800K from state funding, Miller said to the paper that this could be the last straw, forcing the station to cancel all local programming or even merge with another PBS entity. More layoffs would be inevitable.

How much more bad news can a non-profit take?

Posted in Television Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments »

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