The worst TV station you've ever watched

kingchuck69

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Oct 11, 2008
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Grand Rapids, MI
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This past week, I went down to Kentucky to see my Dad on Thanksgiving. Dad lives in the Bowling Green area, where there's only two TV stations: WBKO-13 (ABC with Fox and The CW on their digital subchannels) and WNKY-40 (NBC with CBS subchannel).

WBKO-13 is very exceptional, especially for a small-market station. But sadly, WNKY is an abortion. The video quality is quite poor, they only have a small weather department (with a dog named Radar) and no news bureau and sometimes when they run NBC, there's no audio. All last week, they showed the tail end of the countdown that alerts affiliates when Nightly News begins. Also, I swear to God, ever since they became NBC seven years ago (they were Fox from 1992-2001), they've had maybe six logos.

Even the logo they have on their website is different than the logos they use on the air.

Even worse, WNKY is owned by Max Media, which is partially owned by Pat Robertson (yes, The 700 Club). That show airs on their CBS subchannel.

Luckily, I live in Grand Rapids where, yes, even the stations here make mistakes now and then (FTR, WOOD-TV 8 aired the beginning of Nightly News with the vertical hold out of whack Monday night). We do, however have a religious/family entertainment station, WLLA-64 whose video/sound quality sucks ass.

So, what was the worst TV station you've ever watched? Discuss.
 

kc1ih

Active Member
Oct 16, 2008
220
26
28
Hudson, Florida
WSNL Channel 67, in Happauge, NY, in the mid 70's. They had a weather man (Frank Bruce?) who did an hourly weather report on weekday evenings. Apparently they just switched his camera to air, no director, the camera position was fixed, etc.. One night the camera came on, but he had apparently missed his cue, so when they went to him he was on-the-air picking his nose.
 

Ifandorbut

Well-Known Member
Oct 12, 2008
2,270
91
48
The USA network sucks major balls. I usually feel a little dirty after watching VH1, so I can understand that criticism. Any station that spends more attention at displaying graphics of other shows that have nothing to do with the show you're watching, they also suck on balls.

I like Turner Classics Movies.
 

hexagram

Medicinal & Recreational.
Oct 11, 2008
2,760
97
48
Seattle, WA
All of the stations in Alaska are shitty (but then again they are all owned by one entity). Even the same news reporters work on their "rival networks". It's to the point where I just don't watch TV anymore.

Call it pride, but Seattle has the best local programming than every place I've traveled to (especially the news team at KING 5).
 
Oct 29, 2008
422
7
18
This past week, I went down to Kentucky to see my Dad on Thanksgiving. Dad lives in the Bowling Green area, where there's only two TV stations: WBKO-13 (ABC with Fox and The CW on their digital subchannels) and WNKY-40 (NBC with CBS subchannel).

WBKO-13 is very exceptional, especially for a small-market station. But sadly, WNKY is an abortion. The video quality is quite poor, they only have a small weather department (with a dog named Radar) and no news bureau and sometimes when they run NBC, there's no audio. All last week, they showed the tail end of the countdown that alerts affiliates when Nightly News begins. Also, I swear to God, ever since they became NBC seven years ago (they were Fox from 1992-2001), they've had maybe six logos.

Even the logo they have on their website is different than the logos they use on the air.

Even worse, WNKY is owned by Max Media, which is partially owned by Pat Robertson (yes, The 700 Club). That show airs on their CBS subchannel.

Luckily, I live in Grand Rapids where, yes, even the stations here make mistakes now and then (FTR, WOOD-TV 8 aired the beginning of Nightly News with the vertical hold out of whack Monday night). We do, however have a religious/family entertainment station, WLLA-64 whose video/sound quality sucks ass.

So, what was the worst TV station you've ever watched? Discuss.
I looked at the web site link you provided. I did not think you were serious about "Radar" the dog, but you were. Very funny.....
 

kingchuck69

Joker! Joker! Joker!
Oct 11, 2008
6,117
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Grand Rapids, MI
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I live east of Bowling Green. I dont know anybody that watches WNKY. I watch all the Nashville stations except for WBKO. WNKY isnt even HD.

WSMV-4 is a superior station comparing to WNKY. Same goes with WTVF-5, especially since WNKY is both NBC/CBS.

IMHO, WNKY should have never flipped from Fox in the first place, especially since WZTV-17 doesn't have much of a signal in southern KY.

Interesting fact: WBKO originally started as an independent. They flipped to ABC in the late 60's, even though WKRN-2 has a decent signal in the area.
 

Vargas

Molon Labe!
Oct 16, 2008
3,426
153
63
Western, PA
My local TV news on NBC screws up all the time. WJAC-TV. they are actually the best of the locals and the news anchors are pretty good but the producers and camera peope must be attrocious.

They constantly screw up and cut to the wrong camera so the news anchor is actually looking to the side instead of right at you. One time, sombody must have walked away and bumped the tripod because the camera did a full 360 around the studio while the anchor was talking. Hilarious.

They will constantly try to cut to somebody "ON THE SCENE" and that rarely works right. The audio rarely works or the video feed just stops.

But my all time favorite is when they get the logo's wrong for the story they are intro-ing. let me try to explain. When the camera is on the anchor and he is saying "...and a major drug bust tonight...." and the logo behind the anhor on the screen, before cutting to live footage is of a needle, money, handcuffs, etc. Well, some of the time they get that wrong. The anchor will be building up the human interest story of the night "....and tonight, children coming together to help a family in need..." and instead of having the right logo up, they'll have the drug bust logo or even worse, the chalk outline of a body up that they would use as if they were about to cut to a story about a murder. I hope you can all understand what I'm saying because there is nothing better than seeing a srew up like this.
 

IdRatherBeSkiing

Sherbet is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
Oct 11, 2008
29,094
15,129
168
Toronto, ON
When I grew up in southern SK, we got the stations from Minot, ND on cable. I think they had one camera. I think if the camera was not back from filming commercials, they could not do the 6PM news. The local commercials had some guy at a car dealership (for example) talking about the great deals while you listened to the wind howling into the microphone.

After about 3 or 4 years they switched to a sat feed of the Detroit stations.
 

blyons200

These pretzels are making me thirsty.
Oct 12, 2008
8,448
1,548
113
The BBQ Capital
MTV does suck, but I think the worst is the Reality Channel, though it's easy to confuse the two. Close runner ups are Lifetime and Oxygen channels.:mad:
 

kingchuck69

Joker! Joker! Joker!
Oct 11, 2008
6,117
4,051
168
Grand Rapids, MI
chuck69.com
I have another station to add to the suck list:

WGTU-TV 29&8 in Traverse City, MI.

At one time, WGTU and WNKY were co-owned, surprisingly. WGTU was also a 700 Club affiliate and would air a Sunday afternoon preach-a-thon instead of ABC programming.

For years, WGTU's signal SUCKED; their tower's in Kalkaska and I have a friend who lives there. Even though he's down the road from the transmitter, the signal would fade in and out CONSTANTLY.

Of course, that's no longer a problem since he now has digital TV.

Recently, WGTU was purchased by cross-town NBC station WPBN 7&4 and many of their problems are long-gone.

Oh, and this is gold: WGTU gave us one of the most-popular TV bloopers of all time. As a matter of fact, it was on numerous blooper shows (note: it was on YouTube not too long ago and it's gone now). It was from "Count Zappula's Horror House", their late night horror show. The host is emerging from his coffin when suddenly, the coffin falls over, knocking over a curtain, revealing the news set. The man who played Count Zappula, Don Melvoin, was a locally popular TV personality who also played Deputy Don for the kids Saturday mornings and played "Diamond Jim" in the 1980 film "Somewhere in Time".
 

memebag

Top Brass, ADVP
Oct 11, 2008
17,404
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Lake Huntzing
I can't relate to this thread. I don't remember the last time I watched TV that wasn't exactly what I wanted to watch at that instant.
 

limegrass69

Confused
Oct 12, 2008
6,079
245
63
New York
Local access cable TV is always a painful watch.

Personally, I dig the old school news themes like:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iUwJFFlwjU]YouTube - WBAL 11PM News Tease and Open 1981[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaP1sfCBwiw]YouTube - WPVI December 1981 Action News Open[/ame] (music still used today)

But here's a real bad one from Alaska: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeA75CQaAw]YouTube - CBS News 13 Open 2006 (K13XD Fairbanks AK Affiliate)[/ame]

Jam on, baby!

The mention of WSNL in Smithtown reminds me of it's counterpart in NJ that I used to watch when I was a kid...WWHT/Channel 68 Newark, NJ. They had a little pea shooter transmitter in West Orange, NJ. They had this guy, Bill Roller, who was the news guy, public affairs guys, and probably the engineer and janitor. They showed all sorts of crap (religion, off net syndie stuff -- really awful shows) during the day (and the Uncle Floyd TV show)...Then at 8:00 it would become WHT which was a subscription TV service that required a descrambler. After 11 PM, they'd show the soft core porn, and I'd try to watch it through the squiggly lines...was that a boob or an elbow?? Ahhh...the good old days.

In the 80s, they tried an all music video TV format called U68 which was pretty cool...then it went to Home Shopping. These days, they are Spanish language Telefutura.