There is a really bad signal from MeTV on Comcast. It looks just like small dish satellite during a storm when I had Dish Network. I wonder if a big outfit like Comcast is using a small dish for the MeTV signal in North Little Rock.
MeTV isn’t a satellite network; it’s a channel feed that’s syndicated to local TV stations, for them to run on their secondary channels. This page on Wikipedia indicates that, in Little Rock, it’s on KMYA’s digital channel 49.1.
So, Comcast is picking up MeTV in the same way that it’s getting your other local stations (presumably, using an over-the-air digital antenna).
That said, as your local station is picking up their MeTV signal from a satellite, it’s possible that the issue is on KMYA’s end, rather than Comcast’s.
Upon further review:
The Wikipedia page on KMYA indicates that their transmitter is actually near El Dorado, some distance to the south of Little Rock, and their over-the-air signal may not actually reach Little Rock (though, apparently, and as you describe, you can get it on cable in Little Rock). I wonder if that distance is part of the issue.
Most networks load their signal up to a satellite for distribution to their stations.
Yes, and I referred to that in the last sentence in the post of mine which you quoted.
My point was that, unlike, say, ESPN or HBO, your local Comcast hub is probably not pulling MeTV off of a satellite feed. Your local MeTV affilliate (KMYA) is pulling the feed off of the satellite link which you posted, and broadcasting it over the air.
As with other local station feeds, Comcast is probably getting that feed from an over-the-air antenna, or maybe they have some other arrangement for getting it directly from those stations (like an online feed).
Not only is the station pretty far from Little Rock, it’s transmitting at barely half the maximum allowable power for over-the-air TV stations. I’d guess the TV station and cable company are both too cheap to spring for any kind of better arrangement.
I’m too lazy to check it out, but I seem to recall that MeTV is **only **available through its local affiliates, at least as far as streaming is concerned.
I think that’s probably true, as their business model is based on selling the programming feed to those local affiliates, and offering it streaming, directly to viewers, would cut into that.
MeTV was originally developed by a Chicago broadcasting company (Weigel Communications), which owns several independent UHF stations here; Weigel put together the MeTV format initially for one of their own channels.
When TV stations in the U.S. switched over to digital broadcasting, it also opened up “secondary digital channels” for those stations. Many stations didn’t know what to do with those channels, and wound up running round-the-clock weather radar, among other things, on them. At that point, Weigel began marketing MeTV to stations in other markets, to run on their secondary channels. (Tribune Media offers a similar service, Antenna TV.)
(Disclosure: I nearly wound up working at MeTV, as their director of research, a few years back.)
I have no problem picking it up on my fillings, but I’m not far from their antenna.
There is (or was) an all-oldies radio station in Chicago branded “MeTV FM.” Although it’s a commercial station, it’s at the very, very left end of the dial, even below where the non-commercial stations are clustered. I think its frequency is something like 87.9. I’m not even sure every FM tuner can be set that low.
Kenobi, MeTV does research? I thought their research was, “what’s the cheapest old TV series we can get that still has high-quality prints?”
87.7. It’s one of the stations on my car radio, but you’re right–not all radios reach that end of the AM dial. A few years ago, it was a sports talk radio station, and I remember its final day being full of on-air drama, but don’t exactly remember why now.
Ah, yes, this was it. The hosts learned they were being fired over Twitter while on-air. I was listening to it while this was going down. Quite interesting radio listening.
ETA: Found some texts I sent went it went down to my friend who works in the industry:
FM dial actually.
87.7 FM is actually the audio signal from analog TV channel 6. The FCC still allows low-power analog TV stations to operate on channel 6.
“MeTV FM” is actually a TV station, WRME-LP, that broadcasts from the top of the building formerly known as the John Hancock Center. The FCC requires them to broadcast a picture of some kind, so if you tune your TV (if it has OTA reception) to channel 6 (not 6.1), you might be able to see their pictures and hear their audio.
:smack:
Yes, yes, of course!
[side discussion]
And you repeated pretty much what my industry friend told me when I asked him why the call sign was WGWG-LP, and what the LP stood for: “The LP is for Low Power Tv station which is what they technically are… Analog channel 6 is adjacent to the low end of the FM band and its audio transmits over 87.75 MHz. Before the digital changeover, lots of channel 6 TV stations encourages people to listen in their cars (Fox 6 in MLW did that) … and since low-power stations don’t have to go digital, a bunch of those across the country are being used as de-facto radio stations.”
[/sd]
I get MeTV on my satellite. Channel 49.
Beck, do you have DirecTV or Dish? I suspect that you may be getting the feed from that station in El Dorado (as one of your “local stations”), which your satellite TV service is then giving you as a channel (in the same way that you can get your local CBS, NBC, ABC, or Fox stations over the dish).
The research would have been more around doing analyses of research data on MeTV viewers, for use in attracting advertisers to buy ad time on the channel.
(If you watch any amount of MeTV, you may gather, based on the number of ads for Medicare supplemental insurance, home delivery of medical equipment, and life insurance, that their typical audience skews…a bit older. 
)
DirecTV, I think you’re correct.
I found that out when I borrowed my dad’s Chrysler 300. The dial wrapped around at 87.9.
They don’t have live streaming, but you can view some of their shows on demand at MeTV.com and on their smartphone app.