Since Sept. 30 of this year, avid New York sports team fans are receiving less coverage of their teams due to the loss of New York broadcast stations on campus.
According to Comcast, the campus cable provider, ABC, CBS and FOX stations will now be broadcast from the Philadelphia area.
"I was really upset when I found out because all my teams are N.Y. teams," Molly Chase, junior English major, said. "So now without (New York) CBS and FOX, I can't see any more Giants games. All I get are the Eagles and I don't really want to watch that."
Andrew Amadeo, junior finance major, said that while he can still find the New York teams on TV sometimes, "it seems as though Philadelphia teams have first priority in South Jersey."
Fred J. DeAndrea, public relations director of the Eastern division of Comcast Cable, wrote in an e-mail, "Comcast worked to notify its customers of these changes repeatedly and through numerous mechanisms, starting at least 30 days in advance of the changes. We used local newspaper ads, analog crawls on both channels, messages to set-top boxes, customer letters and a dedicated Web site."
DeAndrea said the New York broadcast TV stations have not been dropped. Instead, they are part of the Mercer County/Trenton digital lineup. He said Comcast took New York CBS and FOX stations from analog to digital. According to DeAndrea, the digital service allows for interactive features and more channels, providing customers with more choices and flexibility.
"These changes are made in an effort to continue giving our customers the best programming available with more options, flexibility and convenience," he said.
According to the College's Networking Technical Service (NTS) Web page, which oversees campus television services, the College's system is an analog system. The analog system works from the frequency signals sent from broadcast stations.
As of Feb. 20, 2009, the FCC is requiring broadcast stations to convert to digital. According to the NTS Web site, "The College is reviewing with Comcast the possibility of providing digital format content in the future."
DeAndrea said Comcast does not determine the television market an area receives. It is the Federal Communications Commission and Nielsen, a marketing information provider, that regulate this.
