Despite the by now well-known reception issues that stations are having on the high VHF band, post transition, one UHF station wants to move to a VHF channel.

WWAZ License LLC the licensee of station WWAZ-DT Channel 44 in Fond du Lac, Wis., requested substitution of DTV Channel 5 for Channel 44 at Fond du Lac. According to the FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (MM Docket 09-115) [PDF] WWAZ said the channel change will serve the public interest because it "will eliminate the technical requirement that the Station co-locate with Station WWRS-DT, Mayville, Wisconsin, to avoid adjacent-channel interference between the two stations."

WWAZ also said the proposed channel substitution and other related changes in the facility's location will allow it to serve twice the number of Hispanic viewers. The FCC staff found the original proposal would have caused a loss of service to viewers along the western and northwestern edge of both the WWAZ-DT's Appendix B digital service area and WWAZ-TV's licensed analog service area.

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COMMENTS (1) 07/02/2009 This makes no real-world sense unless the statement from WWAZ was re-worded from "...to avoid adjacent-channel interference between the two stations" to read "...to avoid the expense of a UHF transmitter's power requirement". Very few people still have the old 5-foot long antennas mounted on their roofs and when their competitors start providing mobile DTV programming they will have opted out because of their frequency choice. By way of example; In SFO, KGO channel 7 went from 24 back to 7 on June 13th and effectively dropped of the map as far as many of their off-air viewers were concerned even though they were able to operate from their old antenna at the TOP of Sutro! Indeed, it will be interesting to see how this channel works for WWAZ. Good luck. More...

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