Hokey Smokes, Bullwinkle, what a week!

Monday night we become the first station in Madison to turn off our analog broadcast with a few other stations following the next day.  Then on Wednesday morning a lengthy power failure in our neighborhood lasting longer than our backup power caused some other problems that we're still fixing today.

We were visited on Wednesday by a couple of friendly agents from the FCC who asked how the transition was going at our station, and gave all the Madison stations a big compliment about our education efforts as compared to other TV markets around the country.

But the phone calls continue.  One issue that some people are having is that their converter box or digital TV set can't find one station.  Sometimes this is caused by a bad channel scan the first time through.  Depending on the type of converter or TV, this can sometimes be checked by going to the ACTUAL digital broadcast channel and seeing if the station comes in.  Yes, each Madison TV station has a "new" channel that your TV "should" translate back to the channel number that you're used to.  WMTV, NBC15 is actually broadcasting in digital on channel 19.  Once your converter or TV finds our channel, it translates it back to "virtual" channels 15-1 and 15-2.  (You didn't want to memorize a whole new set of channel numbers, did you?)
 
                  Analog   Digital
Station  Network  Channel  Channel
 WISC      CBS       3        50
 WMTV      NBC      15        19
 WHA-TV    PBS      21        20
 WKOW      ABC      27        26
 WMSN      Fox      47        11
 WBUW      CW       57        32

If you're missing a station, try entering the digital channel number.  Sometimes this will allow you to make antenna adjustments until you get a solid signal.  After that, try re-scanning your channels to lock in the "old" numbers.  This has worked for a few people, one of which suggested we let others know on our web site.  So here you go.

One problem with being on channel 19 is that there's still an analog channel 19 on the air in La Crosse.  They won't sign off until mid-April.  So if you are somewhere between Madison and La Crosse, be patient, and when you see WXOW-TV disappear from your TV on channel 19, rescan your converter or TV set and hopefully we will come in.