With digital TV, stations can offer digital subchannels with distinct programming. In Portland, KGW offers the "KGW Weather Channel" (formerly NBC Weather Plus) on 8.2, while OPB offers additional public television programming and OPB Radio. KPXG supplements its Ion feed with children's, lifestyle, and religious programming; and KNMT broadcasts wall-to-wall-to-wall evangelical Christianity across 5 channels.

MGM will provide classic TV and movies to unspecified Fisher stations in the coming months with This TV. Other possible additions include:

If you're in Bend, and you're a BendBroadband customer, there's a very good chance you no longer receive KFXO. More from Utterly Boring.

Update: And Utterly Boring reports this morning that indeed, local Fox is gone from BendBroadband.

KGW owner Belo and cable outfit Charter have come to agreements to keep three Belo stations on the air:

Charter has reached tentative accords with Belo Corp.’s KMOV-TV, the CBS affiliate in St. Louis and the company’s WVEC-TV, the ABC affiliate in Norfolk, Va., according to message on the station’s Web sites. Similarly, the operator has reached a tentative agreement with Belo’s WCNC–TV-DT, an NBC affiliate serving the Charlotte, N.C. DMA.

It was unclear at press time, if Charter had come to an agreement with Belo’s St. WFAA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Dallas/Ft. Worth. Early last week, the Belo stations had notified customers via their Web sites that their signals may go dark on Charter systems in the aforementioned markets.

Apparently Belo is asking for a penny per day per Charter subscriber, which adds up to $1.6M a year for KMOV alone.

Update: Multichannel News is now saying Charter and Belo have come to terms for all stations in the group including KGW and Northwest Cable News. Dish and Fisher have still not come to an agreement.

Tower Trouble On Sylvan Hill

The Sylvan Tower that broadcasts the KOIN Local 6 signal has a broken guy wire. A guy wire is a tensioned cable designed to give support to structures.

The tower in question is located in the West Hills of Portland and is supported by multiple wires. The guy wire that broke is located near the top and on the southeast side of the tower.

Police have been notified.

My first instinct was not to comment, and then I felt a small rant coming on: These kinds of "gotcha" stories are stupid. So ex-KATU'er Rob Marciano (apparently) got a little lit and had his picture taken with three completely clothed women on a bed doing nothing worse than grinning a bit drunkenly. And then someone gave the photo to the blog The Dirty. And now it's on Gawker. And now Marciano's friends are worried he's going to lose his job as CNN weather hottie. To quote Dr. Maddow:

Really? Seriously?

Are chastity, poverty and sobriety vows we have to take now when we get in front of a TV news camera? Or do we just need to stay out of range of a viewfinder whenever we're living our lives--almost impossible? He didn't hurt anyone, and he didn't do anything illegal; he's just got questionable taste in women, since apparently one of the three he's pictured with gave the photos to The Dirty (where she then got called a skank).

I'm just getting tired of the pretend-wholesome bit. Newspeople have never been wholesome. Ever. Thus endeth the rant.

Well hey there, newer version of Drupal!

OMI has gotten a much-needed upgrade from a really, really old version of the software it uses to a more recent one. In the process, it's gotten a very basic facelift. I don't have time to get this pimped out to perfection, so this is what it's likely to look like for a while. I think it's a clean, usable look. Let me know if you have any problems.

Oh, also! I forgot. If you are registered, you can now add an icon that'll show up whenever you comment. If more people other than me blogged, it'd show up when you blogged, too. But when I did that, it was an endless parade of icons of me on the front page, and that's all kinds of disturbing...

Hear that "D'OH!!" echoing across the snowy hills of NW PDX? That would be WWeek, facepalming itself for co-sponsoring an Obama inauguration bash with the Democratic Party of Oregon:

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. We have no specific problem with the DPO; it’s just not a group we should be in bed with.

“Put it this way,” political reporter Jeff Mapes wrote accurately on his blog at oregonlive.com last week. “If the Oregonian co-sponsored an inaugural party celebrating any politician’s victory, you can be sure Willamette Week would be all over it.”

Even worse, WW’s editorial department didn’t know about the co-sponsorship until Mapes wrote about it on Dec. 17.

That last part? Double d'oh!!

Just got email from Humpy:

Just so you're the first-ish to know, Amy J. Ruiz is leaving us to work for Sam Adams. Yay for her, BOOOOO for us. Here's the deets.

Not really a surprise, but I'll be sad to see Amy leave the Merc. She was a large part of the more news-oriented focus there in recent years. Who's left reporting from City Hall? ANYone? I mean, besides the O?

UPDATE: Looking for work? Here's the job posting.

I have been reading that Belo (KGW's owner) wasn't able to come to an agreement on carriage fees for BELO stations in other markets and that WFAA and KMOV will be off the Charter cable systems come December 31. I know there are a couple of cities serviced by Charter in this state.

Has anyone heard this for KGW? Rumors are around that they will be...

Notice to non-media people who read this blog: Go to PDXInfo.net to give reports of weather closures and dangers. Don't email OMI. I am not a TV station, nor a radio station, nor a newspaper. I ain't nobody but a housewife with a web server. You guys would be amazed how much email I get that is really meant for a media outlet.

Nutling #2 (LouLou) told me she had a dream last night, and I quote: "I dreamed it snowed, and then I went into the news reporters' room and bonked the news reporters on the head!" She didn't explain why she was mad at the news reporters, but there you have it. Luckily for you, Lou weighs about 55 lbs dripping wet and is short enough that I think just about anyone in the market could outrun her.

Carry on with the snowpocalypse! And if you're on Twitter, don't forget to add #pdxtst to your tweets so they show up in the Portland! Twitter! Storm! Team! feed.