Anyone known what's happening with WNBC OTA DTV in NYC?

[them8os235 47]

First and foremost not an Emby issue.  But here and Channels is where I go to for an informed community on things like this...

I'm on the 14th floor in NYC and normally I can detach the actual antenna wire winding at the top of my two antennas (at two different physical locations too) and I'll still get 100% signal strength (I have done it) of all local NYC transmitted stations WNBC included, channels, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4; could probably put the connector base in a metal mesh box and still get 100% signal strength. 

But I no longer get those channels for a good number of days now. After numerous rescans of channels by HDHomeRun setup tool and fiddling with the antenna positions even tho I knew that was needless.  I do still get the ATSC 3.0 channel WNBC-HD ch 104.1 at 100% strength, but due to DRM it only tunes for a second then goes away so I cannot watch it.  Also, WNBC has no presence in the coverage list anymore; see the image below. 

I've exhausted every Google search term I can think of and I haven't found any information/news about whether this is planned maintenance or outage -- thus they will eventually return -- or like NBC  channels over TVE these OTA DTV channels are gone for good too and only available thru apps / Peacock or some other means.  

Have any of you read or know anything about this and know what's going on with WNBC OTA DTV broadcasting? Thanx for all informed replies.

 

p.s. the one NBC entry you do see is located in Maryland or Delaware, and too far away to get anyway.

Edited February 2, 2025 by them8os235

[them8os235 47]

Update:  Someone over on Channels forum knew what's going on...  Seems had been [likely unplanned] a degradation in service many days ago. Followed by complete outage more recently.  Strongly implying planned maintenance to repair whatever was behind the degradation in service.

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/new-york-ny-ota.275729/page-1185?post_id=63818938#post-63818938

 

Edited February 2, 2025 by them8os235

[them8os235 47]

The NBC broadcasting is back and I think "Signal Quality %" in the HDHomeRun Config GUI monitoring tool shows a higher percent than ever.

[Carlo 4560]

Glad it got resolved, but every time I looked at this thread I kept thinking of one thing   0:45

 

[them8os235 47]

LoL !  And now I have an ear-worm that won't go away.    

Side-note, odd that w-eNNN-bc (lol) still isn't listed in the coverage map at https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/dtvmaps (use any NYC zipcode, ex 10001).  I guess I can't go by that 'official' FCC site anymore.

[Carlo 4560]

FCC records are fubar.

How can you not list the flagship NBC station?

Maybe because they don't know what WNBC is:
The FCC doesn't know it's the flagship NBC station because they think the call sign has been assigned to NBC TELEMUNDO LICENSE LLC since 1992.

https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/publicCallSignSearchResults.html

NBC sold its broadcasting spectrum in 2017 for $214 million. They sold 3 station broadcasting rights between NY & Chicago for $480 million.
They now broadcast using spectrum owned by WNJU which is the flagship Telemundo NBC station.

[them8os235 47]

Wow. Surprising to learn. Thank you for that @Carlo

[Carlo 4560]

It's amazing the dumb stuff you remember like this.  I used to read all the FCC TV change logs up until they stopped logging this during the pandemic.
Now the database is all messed up.
 

[Louma 2]

I would like to shed some light on these NBC outages.   I lost NBC reception yesterday (February 18, 2025) and it has not come back as of yet.  I have reached out to a tech guy over at NBC and learned why these outages are taking place.    Normally they broadcast from the WTC.   But they switch over to a backup transmitter at 4 Times square when they need to do maintenance.   For me, living out in Suffolk County, their signal goes from 100% to no signal at all when they do this.   I experimented and determined that I would need to go through extraordinary means to get their backup signal.   It just doesn't pay.  After the eight days are up, I just go to their App on my Roku.  Not really crazy about that solution.  After reading other comments online, it appears that the backup signal is very much inferior to their primary signal.   I am tending to think that NBC is not aware of how much this is affecting viewers.