If there is damage to the actual transmission tower or the equipment on the tower you can’t just call the Best Buy Geek Squad to fix it. Equipment may need to be ordered and licensed repair technicians found. Not just anybody can get a ladder out and climb up the tower.
1 Like
Working fine for me now and I am farther away in the Inland Empire
Yes – no signal in Redondo Beach, CA
Just because the main transmitter may be down doesn’t mean that any rebroadcasters are down. Station Wiki pages usually list these.
I’m surprised no one reported this problem earlier. I can pinpoint the start of the transmission problems to approximately 10:36pm almost a week ago, on Wednesday 1/11/17. My TiVo was recording Code Black on KCBSDT at that time, and everything was fine when the program went to commercial break at 10:33pm Pacific. Towards the end of the ad break, at 10:36pm, the signal started seriously pixellating - and a good signal never returned. I’ve checked KCBS every day since then, multiple times a day… with no joy. The channel strength meter on my TiVo says that KCBSDT signal strength is hovering in the low 20s - whereas the signal strength for every other major OTA digital channel is in the 60s to the 80s.
< rant_warning >
What’s up, CBS? There haven’t been any serious rains since then - so what’s with the bogus “weather has hampered our repair efforts” explanation? (That explanation has since been taken down from the losangeles.cbslocal.com web site.) And seriously, suggesting that the “solution” if for people sign up for people to sign up for your overpriced CBS All Access pass - which only solves the problem for 7 days? My trial period would be up tomorrow if I had actually done that on the first day your signal went out. Come on, you’re the only one of the original major 3 networks in this major metropolitan area of LA that’s having this problem - and the only one whose shows aren’t readily available through some other channel like Hulu or Netflix. Perhaps you’re trying to artificially inflate the subscription numbers for your CBS All Access offering, as a runup to negotiations with DirecTV Now? Shame on you for letting this problem linger this long - without any adequate explanation or recourse…
< /rant_warning >
It is always interesting reading peoples rants about things they don’t understand. First you need to realize that most of the TV broadcast antennas on Mt Wilson and Mt Harvard are located over 200 feet up one or another tower. They have to hire licensed bonded certified tower climbers that will not climb the tower when the weather is bad as it is very unsafe to do this. Also the availability of these specialized climbers even in a market like LA is very limited so scheduling is not always immediate. Also, it is very likely that if the problem is in the antenna that the 30kw of typical fr power feeding the antenna will have caused some of the parts in the antenna to literally burn up! The dimensions are typically made to high precision for insulators and parasitic elements, and the antenna manufacturer normally only builds them for antennas that are on the assembly line, spares not waiting on the shelf! Antenna manufacturers, like Dielectric for example, will drop everything normally to support a customer that is having a problem with one of their antennas, but we are still talking time to fly out a tech, make a determination, order parts, build them and schedule installation. Considering the weather forecasts for the remainder of this week, unless they fix it tonight or tomorrow morning they will probably be operating at reduced power in to next week.
Now consider that these days most of us are used to sticking some little compromise antenna on top of the TV and bingo, there is a signal. If you are old enough to remember back 35 or so years, every house had an antenna on the roof pointed at Mt Wilson to be able to get a good signal. Digital broadcasting has sort of spoiled us as the picture and sound quality is the same right up to the point that the noise overtakes the ability to decipher the 8 digital levels of signal in the ATSC 8VSB signal. When you reach that point it turns to pixels and then quickly goes away. If you still had a directional TV antenna on the roof pointed the right way you would probably still see KCBS without any problem, but nobody wants to see an antenna these days.
OH WELL
I live in an apartment building with a roof antenna. I am in the San Fernando Valley. I can get no signal at all for KCBS. The idea that if we had a roof antenna, we would be getting the signal is false.
Interesting speculation about the lack of an antenna - but completely wrong. I have an external antenna mounted on the roof of my garage, a Channel Master CM-2018 Digital Advantage 60 outdoor antenna, mounted approximately 25 feet above ground with a clear line of sight to Mt. Wilson. For many months, until approximately 10:36pm on 1/11/17, it was pulling in a solid signal from KCBSDT perfectly fine. The orientation of that antenna has not changed; what has changed is that CBS has acknowledged “serious damage to our main antenna” and “At present, we can only make about 1/8th power”. But you have to work really hard to find those acknowledgements; they’re not anywhere on a sanctioned CBS site (local or national) that I can find. I only stumbled across the acknowledgements today, on this site: http://dennysantennaservice.com/losangeles.html.
I get that repairing the damage is highly-specialized and potentially dangerous work. Yet it’s been a full week since the original damage, and the rains have long since abated. Perhaps it takes longer than a few days to find one of those specialists you’re mentioning. Perhaps you have some insider knowledge about how hard it is to find such a resource… I certainly don’t. But speculating that the problem is on the user’s end (i.e., a lack of an adequate antenna), when the real problem has already been acknowledged by CBS, seems like the silly act of a CBS apologist…
If you follow some of the ATSC 3.0 forums you might find one of the jokes is the ability to modify the towers for ATSC 3.0 transmission. The number of towers that might be modified is so high and the number companies licensed to perform the work is currently so low that it could take 5-7 years to make all the modifications.
Same thing for me, lost channel 2 ota signal last week. Called my antenna guy (I have a strong roof mounted antenna) and he said he has checked 3-4 other clients setup due to losing channel 2 and the weak/no signal is due to something from cbs not their Tablo, tivo, antenna…
Sitting in San Gabriel valley…Just south of Pasadena…less than 12 miles from the towers…NO SIGNAL since last Sunday during football game…And to continue to be out with the upcoming playoff game is complete hogwash and a total cashgrab…not from me!!! I will give my money to a bar and a pretty waitress and have a good time watching the game…
1 Like
Who is doing the cashgrab?
CBS?
Of course…every response they put out has …“We are sorry…working on it…but here is our website for cbs live”…many will get 7 day trial…
Some will cancel in time others will not…
You can find most of Colbert’s opening monologues on YouTube. Love it.
Very interesting feedback. I can only get CBS via Tablo app but not a direct signal from my tv. We get all the other LA stations… My tv just no longer tunes channel 2. Anyone know why it comes through via tablo but not regular antenna outside the app?
I noticed on Thursday 1/12 the picture going in and out. I get tv via an HDTV antenna. That afternoon there was no reception. I live in N Hollywood south of Hollywood/Burbank Airport. I called the station and spoke with an engineer. The main antenna on the transmitter was damaged by what they think was a lightning strike. Severe damage was sustained by much of the electronics. The first backup transmitter was also knocked out and the remaining backup is located in an area that cannot transmit into the “shadows” of the Verdugo Mts. Today they told me that due to severe weather conditions technicians cannot climb the transmitter, so it will be awhile before full-power broadcast transmission . Before this happened, my HDTV signal meter showed the signal strength to be around 93%. Today, it is 38%. Transmission of the signal to cable companies is via a high frequency signal that only cable companies can receive because of a special antenna need to pick-up this kind of signal. That’s why folks who get KCBS 2 have had no problem. The remaining transmitter’s signal is not geographically accessible to all the different terrains of southern California.
Folks who get KCBS 2 VIA CABLE have no problem.
It’s ludicrous that KCBS nor CBS can get priority for a primary antenna repaired in the 2nd largest television market in the country. I live in South Pasadena close to both the Mt. Wilson antenna and Glendale antenna and have 0% signal from either tower.
CBS seems to to care less about their viewers than other broadcasters. I cut the cord 4 years ago when CBS had the dispute with Time Warner over fees and Time Warner halted all CBS and related channels (i.e. Comedy Central) from TWC’s channel line-up. C’mon CBS, put your big boy pants on.
It’s bad PR that no information is available on any CBS site. A simple update on the repair status would be better PR than nothing. Other than the Denny’s site listed in this topic, there is no public information available about the loss of signal.
CBS ‘thinks’ the problem may have been caused by a lightening strike. I would have thought all tranmissions towers are grounded to prevent this type of problem. It also seems suspicious that no other towers or broadcasters on Mt. Wilson were affected. There are not 40 some odd towers up there, so any particular tower serves mutliple broadcasters.
Without OTA vierwers, I’ll be selling the CBS stock I don’t own because CBS won’t be meeting Wall Street expectation for this quarter. CBS must be losing a ton of advertising dollars for everyday the antenna is out of service. I guess CBS has not heard that cable subscriptions are down 15% thanks to cord cutters like those on this website. You would think that the loss of revenue would be enough incentive to expedite any reprair.
I am in Pasadena and I am still having problems receiving CBS
It may have something to do with California becoming an independent nation.
1 Like