KOMI-DT Going Off Air For Super Bowl
ggore writes,
KOMI-TV 24 in Woodward has announced that they will be turning their transmitter off all day on Sunday Feb 3 so that cable subscribers in Woodward, Weatherford, Clinton, Elk City, Alva, Taloga, Watonga, and others, and those with antennas, all in northwest Oklahoma, may watch the Super Bowl in HD.
From Kevin Sherrard
This storyhas also gained the attention from other media outlets.


As promised, KOMI turned their DT signal off after the First Baptist Church service on Sunday. KOKH-DT popped up in its place just as strong and stable as it has been for the last two years and worked perfectly for the whole Super Bowl. Viewers even got to watch part of House before KOMI turned its transmitter back on. We very much appreciate the cooperation of KOMI owner Doug Williams for making the Super Bowl broadcast possible.
KOKH and cable operators will be working hard until the analog cutoff date to find a possible solution for viewers in northwest Oklahoma that will provide a permanent fix and availability of KOKH’s signal.
So did KOMI broadcast the Superbowl? I didn’t think anybody could get KOKH in Woodward with an antenna.
Not sure how cost effective it would be, but about 10 years ago, when we had an ice storm in Tulsa that took out the Chanel 8 tower, KTUL put their signal up on satellite so that Cox could broadcast it on the cable.
Could KOKH put it up, or maybe the cable companies make a deal with Dish/Direct TV to pull it down and rebroadcast.
Just a thought (though maybe not a good one).
KOMI is not a Fox station. It has Bloomberg in the daytime, Ion at night, and The Sportsman Channel on the weekends. Local programming consists of the services of the First Baptist Church (they pay KOMI for this) and KWOX morning radio show 6-8:30 AM.
KOMI went from 160 watts to 16,000 watts. Digital equipment acts differently from analog when it sees two different signals, it can’t make any sense of it at all, just a big mashup of data.
Every alternative is being explored to get KOKH back into northwestern Oklahoma. There is a translator at Seiling, but KOKH’s DT signal can’t be received there either since KOMI turned up the power. Dish or DirecTV do not sell signals to cable operators at all, not first sale or as backup. Trust me, I’ve checked!