Technical Alerts

UPDATE POSTED 10/22/2019 12:39pm

Over the weekend, all of the Seattle area stations that were going to be repacked, changed to their new channels. Viewers will have issue receiving the new channels until they rescan on their digital antennas.

KBTC Did Not change channels over the weekend as our main stations, KBTC and KCKA, were not assigned new channels and therefore did not change channels.

With the channel changes in Seattle by other stations, there are bound to be some possible interference issues with the new channel layout in the market. Additionally, not all stations are operating at their full power and there will be future changes to transmission power, but they will not be advertised, but may cause further issues.

If viewers have issues, we ask you to please “rescan”. We in engineering are always glad to speak with viewers and will do our best to be available. Ask to speak with Steve, Elizabeth, Jelson, or Darin in the engineering department by calling. 253-680-7700

If you have further questions about the FCC Repack, please click here below for more details from the FCC webpage.

Our transmitter work currently going on is just our yearly proof/ audit of our transmission systems and some repair work. We will keep you posted as we progress.

Thank you,

KBTC Engineering Department.

UPDATE AS OF 9/26/2019 7:24AM

KBTC-DR in Seattle is back on the air on channel 28. Viewers will need to rescan to get us.

We are at the same location, same power level, same programming, same PSIP 28.1- 4 on RF channel 28 now rather than RF channel 16.

UPDATE AS OF 9/25/2019 3:27PM

Our low power transmitter in Seattle will be changing channels tomorrow, which will complete our T-Mobile funded grant. This change will affect over the air viewers in the Seattle and surrounding areas. Viewers who loose us after the change will need to rescan to acquire the new channel.

We will go off the air in the AM around 7:00 and plan to be back on the air early afternoon. We will send out updates as thing progress.

We will be moving from channel 16 to channel 28. There will not be a power increase or heightening of the antenna at this point in time as the Canadians have signed off on our application. Once we get Canadian approval, we will schedule the heightening at a later time.

We are required to be vacated from channel 16 in Seattle by October 19, so we will be well ahead of schedule.

As part of the FCC nationwide repack, we have been required to move all three of our transmitters to different channels to make room for the high power stations in the market. We have been fortunate to find channels to move to and to find channels that did not require concessions for other displaced channels. In some cases, we have been able to improve our signal.

UPDATE AS OF 7/12/2019 8:50am

The Orcas island transmitter is now on the air in its new home on channel 18. Viewers will need to rescan to acquire the new channel. Their PSIP (channel information) will still display 28.1- 28.4 and look like it did before.

If you scan to add new channels and not delete out dead channels, you may have two sets of KBTC channels, one of which is non-functional.

With the change to channel 18, our signal will change as we no longer have interference from a distant channel 24 in Canada, and do not have a close channel 18 in Canada, but do have a distant channel 18 in the northern Seattle area.

We hope to see improvement for our North Sound and Canadian viewers. Thank you for your patience during this transitional period.

AS OF 7/9.2019:

The date of the channel switch in the Bellingham area was pushed back to July 11/12 at wich point you will need to rescan to get the new channel (from channel 28 to channel 18)

You may contact us by email with concerns and questions onair@kbtc.org

This change does NOT affect cable or satellite viewers.

Thank you,

KBTC Web Producer