Talk:WENS (TV)/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Nominator: Sammi Brie (talk · contribs) 04:46, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 15:54, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Adding to my queue. Review should not take more than a few days. —Kusma (talk) 15:54, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Content and prose review

I will comment on anything I notice, but not all of my comments will be strictly related to the GA criteria, so not everything needs to be actioned. Feel free to push back if you think I am asking too much, and please tell me when I am wrong.

• Lead seems very short.
  • It's an unimproved lead.
    • It is a lot better now and helps to explain some of the context for UHF difficulties (better than the body, and some of the text does not seem to be covered by the body so lacks citations?)
• Early years: could link to Pittsburgh again.
• WDTV is linked twice in quick succession.
• The WCAE / Ivory tower story is a bit confusing, especially with Irwin.
  • Basically, when the FCC finally threw channel 4 toward Pittsburgh, it specified a location where the site couldn't be used.
• Did WENS finish building the mast?
  • Yes.
• "It was second behind WKJF-TV channel 53 in what was considered a race to sign on." I don't understand what is happening here. What is WKJF-TV?
  • Another television station—one I have since improved to GA-grade.
• I am a bit confused about the relationship between WENS and WDTV. How much were they competitors and how much did they just share the CBS content? (I ask because WENS seems to have been a WDTV initiative).
  • Management from WDTV left to start WENS, but they were not and COULD not be co-owned.
• Is it worth saying something about where Ivory Avenue and Mt Troy Avenue are in relation to Pittsburgh? (Ugh, I just realised that I haven't been to Pittsburgh for over 15 years). Also, where are Irwin and Scranton? (I think I am looking for something like whether these are nearby towns).
  • I've... never been, unfortunately.
• " having added some NBC shows as a result of WKJF-TV's closure" this is the first time we hear of that closure. Perhaps simplfy? "After the rival WKJF closed in 19XX, WENS added some NBC shows to its programming"?
• "have to surrender the games to the VHF outlet" sorry, who is the VHF outlet?
  • Reworded

More later! —Kusma (talk) 21:39, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

• • Handled all to this point. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 04:00, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
    • Will check replies later after finishing read-through. —Kusma (talk) 10:58, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
      • Generally happy with responses. —Kusma (talk) 11:20, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
• Tower collapse: Great quote. Tried to find out more about the storm and failed (did not try very hard). It is listed at List of catastrophic collapses of broadcast masts and towers, with a link to WENS-TV; is that a good title for a redirect and/or should that link be fixed?
  • Wrong suffixes are really common in the media, but in this case a link fix suffices.
• "After the launch of WENS... make it possible" Run-on sentence, could use a break or two.
• Generally, I think I am missing some context about UHF versus VHF television and how much it was a problem for stations to broadcast on one or the other. Is there some overview/context article that could be mentioned/linked?
  • Added a See also.
• Decline and demise: "fundamental problems facing the station" could you be more explicit about these?
  • Done
• "radio station WWSW was awarded a channel 11 construction permit" why do we care about what some radio station does? or is that a television permit so they were set to be competitors? And was Channel 11 VHF?
  • Yes.
• So they ceased operations end of August but continued to try to broadcast on VHF until December?
  • Correct, and not unusual. Some stations said they'd go back on if they ever got a V. Very few ever did.
• Later use of channel 16 in Pittsburgh: why is there a {{main|WINP-TV}} here when WINP-TV is not even mentioned?
  • Call sign change of the former WQEX. This one has to stay as is.
• The section generally seems oddly titled: the first half is about Channels 47, 22 and 13, and the final sentence is about the WENS studios. The middle paragraph is about the broadcast facilities and makes no mention of the frequency channels.
• Actually, there is one sentence about the later use of channel 16 in Pittsburgh in the following section, "the FCC reserved channel 16 for noncommercial use".
  • The first paragraph is necessary context for why the facility got reused. At some point, I will end up doing WINP, which has quite the history in its own right!
• "Telecasting, Inc., the final owner of WENS" maybe I haven't been paying attention enough, but weren't they the owner throughout the history of WENS?
  • Turns out they renamed months into their history. Added.
• WENS after suspending operations: "today's WDTV" / "today's Sinclair Broadcast Group" maybe best to reformulate this in a way that can't go out of date when something happens to WDTV?
  • Kind of hard to reword, unfortunately.

The article looks well researched (but will need to check sources later) and fairly detailed. It may be related to my lack of knowledge of American TV, but I have some difficulty understanding the big picture here (possibly this is connected to the UHF/VHF issue?) Making me see the big picture is not strictly in the GA criteria, though :) —Kusma (talk) 10:58, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

@Kusma: In addition to all the changes mentioned above, I am putting this down because I think you have finally found the issue. This station's history is very much about being a UHF. UHF television broadcasting#United States needs sources but it provides something of the needed overview. Here's my Cliffs Notes version: Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 17:30, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, now it makes sense. —Kusma (talk) 20:03, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

When the FCC first authorized channels for television, it authorized 2–13 in the VHF band. This seemed adequate, but there were some issues of interference due to spacing and the early receiver designs. There was also a lot more demand for TV after World War II than the FCC had counted on. In October 1948, it instituted a freeze on new TV stations in order to revise technical standards.

That freeze ended in April 1952 with new channel spacing (some 30 existing stations were given new channels) and the opening of a new 70-channel (14–83) UHF band. Early UHF technology tended to produce clean signals but that did not cover as wide an area as VHF stations. Critically, there was no requirement for TV set manufacturers to make their sets receive UHF stations. This meant that, for almost all people who wanted to see (say) WENS, they had to go buy a converter, the first set-top box, if you will. Convincing people of that was tough work. Even in a large market like Pittsburgh, only a VHF station was certain to be received in all homes.

The coverage area and reception disadvantages made UHF television, except in a few areas where the only regional stations were on the UHF band (e.g. South Bend, Indiana), a losing proposition. UHF stations could get network affiliations, but in some cases, the networks—and sponsors, who in the early days of TV were determinative in where and how a show got seen—held back their best shows for the VHF station in the market, even if there was only one. NBC and CBS each tried running UHF stations (e.g. WBUF-TV, WUVN#WHCT: Hartford's CBS station) and failed. In ending its experiment in Hartford, CBS basically said "if we do not affiliate with this new VHF station, we could be in for decades of hurt", and they were right. Advertisers wanted VHF stations, too, because otherwise they missed a large part of homes with televisions. There would not be a mandate in effect for every TV set to receive every channel until 1964.

Another factor, relevant here in Pittsburgh, is that in many cases the new UHF channels were less wanted and thus less likely to be tied up in years-long hearing processes. It wasn't that unusual for the first new post-freeze station in a market to be on UHF with one or two VHF channels still in the hearing phase, and then the UHF died when more VHFs turned up. WGVL (TV) folded the day WSPA-TV showed up. WENS left the air one day and WIIC turned up the next.

As a result, dozens of stations like WENS folded. UHF operators wanted deintermixture—a changing of a market to all VHF or mostly all UHF channels—but this was highly controversial. In a VHF-bearing market (e.g. WRGB near Albany, New York), it threatened to leave fringe-area viewers without TV service. Only a handful of markets were deintermixed. A couple of UHF stations competed for and won VHF channels.

It took UHF decades to win something resembling parity with VHF, though of course by then most network affiliates were on VHF. The All-Channel Receiver Act was a huge help but insufficient, and there were still stations that performed poorly in the UHF band (including an early incarnation of WPGH-TV in this very city). Better transmitter technology, demand for more TV, and there being no other place to put new stations finally helped the UHF band improve in the 1970s and 1980s.

Source spotchecks

Numbering from Special:Permanentlink/1230604541.

• 8: looks ok
• 10: we have the Pirates game from Forbes Field, but nothing on the race with WKJF-TV channel 53
• 14: looks ok
• 29a: looks ok
• 31: looks ok
• 34: looks ok
• 41: ok. page numbers would be a nice bonus
• 43: ok

There's a citation missing for something before 10, but it generally looks fine, solid work as usual. —Kusma (talk) 20:38, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Reworded the 10 item to be more faithful and added page numbers on 41, @Kusma. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 02:43, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Prose is mostly fine now.
• No MoS issues, lead section works now.
• References consistently formatted.
• Sources are newspapers and specialist magazines, reliable for the context
• One issue found during spot checks
• No copyvio concerns.
• Scope is ok
• No stability issues
• Infobox image is fine.
• Sad there are no other images. Are any of the images in some of the old newspapers out of copyright and usable?

No major issues left, just the missing citation in the spot checks and perhaps a prose point or two. Nice work! —Kusma (talk) 20:58, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

• Sourcing issues fixed, prose issues are minor or personal opinion, passing. —Kusma (talk) 08:43, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.