TheCoolTV returning to Salt Lake?

[tardiscaptain]

A post on TheCoolTV facebook page states they are returning to Salt Lake City. Has anyone heard which station will be picking them up?

[CAwasinNJ]

There's a message on what's claiming to be their Twitter page too (though I'm a little skeptical given that there's no mention of it I could find on the official webpage). November 1 is a just a few days away, so I'd watch then. I don't know anything else and there's nothing anywhere now. Hopefully wherever it ends up will give it decent bandwidth.

[cachefreetv]

TheCoolTV's Facebook page says they'll be returning soon "Everywhere". So I would take anything they say with a grain of salt.

I wouldn't expect TheCoolTV to show up on any of the major channels. They are all pretty settled on what they have now, and the only full-power channels with spare bandwidth are KSTU13, who has one SD available, seems they are happy with what they have, and KJZZ, who has enough for 1 720p or 2 SD. I have it from a reliable source that KJZZ has no intention of adding any subchannels. Ever. (Seems the kids lack the business sense of their father.)

That leaves only some LP stations as possible partners. I've talked to the owner of a few LP stations who may be interested. We'll have to see how that plays out.

For now you can watch on the internet: thecooltv.com/live.php . If you have a Roku box, you can find it on the MummyBox private channel (add it here- owner.roku.com/Add/livetvnow ) and Ive heard it's available on AppleTV.

Whatever way I've seen it, online or on TV, it always seems starved for bandwidth. I suspect it's the original feed that's starved.

[CAwasinNJ]

As I understand it from their website, the local versions of The Cool TV are custom for that market and aren't the same as the national version or other local versions. I would speculate that the programming is fed to the affiliates who then program the channel the way they want to. That would be fairly easy to do with an internet distribution system. The bandwidth would then be decided by each station.

What you said about KSTU having an SD channel available is true. I don't know about future plans for KJZZ but it's true they do have space available. (I actually wonder if the station is on the market for the right price, given that they don't even carry their own company's b-ball games anymore and are outsourcing the actual running of the station. That's another discussion though.) There are other possibilities. I don't have the data offhand for what bitrates the various broadcasters are using, but couldn't KUTV put another SD channel alongside their main and KMYU feeds? KTVX could remove the duplicate 4.30 channel (which could be replaced if disaster strikes) and put something else there. KSL seems full-up. The PBS affiliates are not available for obvious reasons. I think KULX is full up. KUPX/ion has an SD channel available most of the week. That could be the "everywhere" you mentioned. The deals are probably made on a national level for ion. KTMW is full. KPNZ only has 1 SD channel at the moment, but I suspect they'd want to program only in Spanish. Ditto with KUTH. I don wonder what the long term plans for the almost identical facilities for KSVN-LD & K39JS-D are. They could add 7 SD channels between them. And then there's KPDR, which is using their bandwidth, but it seems to be infomercial heavy. Of course some existing services could be swapped out too.