Catamount Broadcast Group, LLC, owners of CBS affiliate KHSL channel 12/DTV 43 and NBC affiliate KNVN channel 24/DTV 24 obviously neglect to maintain their station. This is by far the WORST two stations in Northern California, Fox/MyTV affiliate KCVU channel 20 is way better than them and ABC affiliate KRCR channel 7 is the #1 station from the North Coast to the Nevada border and from the Oregon border to Lake Oroville. The CBS and NBC stations in Eureka are even a step up from these for a market that size.
BROADCAST SIGNAL: KNVN is passable, but KHSL is just pathetic. It has issues with remapping from channel 43 to channel 12 and often pixelates and cuts out on cable and satellite feeds. KHSL was highly capable of hooking the digital transmitter into the analog tower, which would ultimately increase its coverage area and move it back to its old analog frequency (12). They did that with KNVN, but why do they have to put themselves deeper into debt and build a brand new tower on its pre-transition channel (43) which actually could have REDUCED the coverage area. Obviously the new tower is garbage and the more "improvements" they say they do the worse it actually gets.
NEWSCASTS: The newscasts on both channels rank distantly lower than KRCR, its more profitable ABC counterpart in Redding because the picture quality is junk; and the news set, music, and graphics are at least ten years old, saved for very minor updates and facelifts. It is in dire need of an extreme makeover with new logos, new titles, a new set, and new music and graphics; broadcasting the news in HD would be nice too. Every time they say they will broadcast news in HD, they lie and the quality just gets worse.
PROGRAMMING: KNVN has some great syndicated programming (Regis & Kelly, Ellen, Oprah, Millionaire, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopary) but some of KHSL's programming is typical that of a Fox affiliate (Judge Karen, Trivial Pursuit, Family Feud, Maury) and the decent programming (Rachael Ray, Dr. Phil, Inside Edition, Extra, Access Hollywood) is oddly scheduled (Rachael Ray airs at 9am, Dr. Phil airs at 5pm, Access Hollywood airs at 1:35 am).
ADVERTISING: These two money-losers air repetitive commercials of odd businesses focusing only on the Chico area, and only a handful in Redding. They need to better their advertising by airing higher quality commercials and broadening out to areas like Redding. The only way these people are staying in business is their website that resembles a big-city station; they pull in most of their revenue from the web, how can anyone run a television station where most of their advertising revenue comes from the web?
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