Talk:KSTU/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 00:05, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:05, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Images are appropriately licensed; Earwig shows no issues; sources are reliable.

• "a decade-long proceeding began to assign VHF channel 13 to Salt Lake City, which was made available in 1980": needs rephrasing; as written this says Salt Lake City was made available in 1980.
  • Reworded
• "applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for channel 20, which would become the first commercial UHF station in the state and its only independent": this doesn't actually say the application was successful, and "would become" is also indefinite. How about "successfully applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for channel 20, which became the first commercial UHF station in the state and its only independent"?
  • Reworded

    I've read through the paragraph a couple of times and I think what bothers me about it is the sequencing. It starts with Springfield's application in 1977, and then goes back to give the history. Because of this, you're using the subjunctive for the approval, since the flashback means we're still in the past. But then we say at the start of the next paragraph that Springfield got a construction permit. For a reader who knows this industry, as you do, no doubt the obvious implication is that the FCC approved the channel 20 application, but we haven't said so. Can we change this so that the paragraph starts with "There had been two attempts" (and if we're not in flashback then we don't need the past perfect, so this could be "Two attempts were made to operate ...")? Then mention KWCS-TV/channel 18, and finally give the information about Springfield in chronological order, adding the notes about it being the first commercial UHF, but (because of KWCS-TV) not the first UHF station in the state. And at that point you can say "approved" without the subjunctive. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

    • @Mike Christie: I've rearranged a lot of material in this area, so please take another look. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

• Not really a problem for GA, but what are all those comments saying "Wed" and "Tue" for?
  • Those are generated by PressPass, the utility I use to format newspaper citations which is made by User:JPxG. "Weekday" will include an HTML note indicating which day of the week the newspaper was published on. This is not a part of the citation template, but is available for convenience in writing articles: in a tacit acknowledgement of their ephemeral relevance and planned obsolescence as artifacts of Spectacle, newspapers have been saying stuff happened "last Thursday" for several hundred years, and it is often useful to know the specific day some event happened.

    Struck, but I have to say that's not at all obvious that that's what this is to another editor who might come along and want to work on the article. I don't know if the templates permit it, but wouldn't it be better to have the comment inside the parameter in the ref tags? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

  @Mike Christie Responding to this one specifically: that's not a parameter. Also going to ping @JPxG to see this comment. It is a setting you can disable, and if you suggest I do so going forward, I will (but you will likely have to put up with it in dozens, even hundreds of improved pages). Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:55, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

  Sammi: No, there's no need to stop using it unless someone else comes up with a reason; all I'm saying is that I couldn't interpret it. Looking at the cite template document I found this: The date of a Web page, PDF, etc. with no visible date can sometimes be established by searching the page source or document code for a created or updated date; a comment for editors such as date=2021-12-25<!--date from page source-->|orig-date=Original date 2011-01-01 can be added. Wouldn't that be more useful than a comment outside the ref? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:09, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

• "As the first UHF station in Utah in five years and first-ever full-market UHF outlet": suggest "As the first UHF station in Utah in five years and first-ever full-market UHF outlet in the state", just to be clear.
  • Reworded
• "When the FCC allocated television channels, the station spacing guidelines meant that inserting channel 13 in Salt Lake City was not possible. In 1968, the FCC denied a petition by Salt Lake radio station KLUB to add channel 13 to Salt Lake City, which would have required changes in unused VHF assignments in Richfield, Vernal, and Rock Springs, Wyoming. That petition was opposed by Great Desert, which at the time was seeking channel 20; the Salt Lake VHF stations; and educational television interests in Utah, including KWCS-TV, who noted the intensive use of channel 13 by translators." I don't understand this. KLUB is a radio station, so why are they interested in a VHF television channel? Because they wanted to start a new station? If so I think we should say that explicitly. I assume Great Desert opposed the addition of 13 to Salt Lake City because it would have been competition. But why does it matter that 13, not currently in the local area, had a lot of translators? And as written this says it was KWCS-TV who "noted the intensive use of channel 13 by translators", but I would have thought Great Desert would have been the ones to make comments in the petition. Or were KWCS commenting in support of being acquired?
  • Yes, that's what KLUB wanted to do. In re translators: The source doesn't say much more here. It might help to explain something about TV in Utah. There is only one set of network affiliates in Utah, in Salt Lake. Downstream from them are some 80 to 100 translators per station rebroadcast, some of which receive signals from each other. The end links in the chain are a very, very long way away from Salt Lake. (KWCS-TV not coincidentally had a channel 13 translator itself)

    The tweak you made addresses my first question. Re the translators, can we say something like 'KWCS-TV, who were concerned about the possible impact on the translators for channel 13"? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

  Done. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:56, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

• "American Television of Utah, a subsidiary of Salt Lake City-based American Stores Company, which had also applied for channel 14": is it relevant that they had applied for 14? We haven't mentioned 14 at all at this point so I'm not sure what the reader learns from this. If it's relevant it should be clearer why. I suspect it's one of the other drop-ins; if so perhaps just "had also applied for channel 14, one of the other three drop-ins approved by the FCC". And now reading further I see it becomes KXIV in Salt Lake City. So when you say the FCC initially approved four drop-ins, does that mean four for Salt Lake City? Or nationwide -- that is, that approving a drop-in meant approving that channel to drop in in multiple places?
  • Four all over the country. They are channel 13 Salt Lake City; channel 8 Knoxville, Tennessee; channel 11 Charleston, West Virginia; and channel 8 Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Three were moves of existing stations in practice (WVLT-TV is at GA). Only Johnstown resulted in a new station, and even then, not really. Channel 14, like 20, had just sat there since 1965. (KJZZ-TV is in the GA pipeline as well, and I do intend to nominate it.)

    OK, that helps me understand. So would it be OK to make it "American Television of Utah, a subsidiary of Salt Lake City-based American Stores Company, which had also applied for the unused UHF channel 14 in Salt Lake City"? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

  Yes. Done. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:56, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

• "The Mountain West partners would later claim that Adams had also been a client of Wiley Rein": I had to go back and check to see that Adams was the owner of KSTU, which then made sense of the Mountain West partners complaints. Can we make this "The Mountain West partners later claimed that Adams, the owner of KSTU, had also been a client of Wiley Rein"?
  • Reworded here
• "but the winner attracted surprise: the Fox network itself": why is this surprising?
  • This was the smallest-market O&O, but yeah, nothing here said surprising.
• "and ordered another trial be held": do we know the outcome?
  • Alas, no. There isn't a single article after that date.

    Not an issue for GA but it would probably be possible to get information from public records of lawsuits. I don't think you'd run afoul of WP:PRIMARY if you restricted it to a statement of the outcome but I also don't think it's necessary. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

• "vote by the commission to designate it for hearing": I think you've explained this to me before, but what does "designate for hearing" mean? It sounds like it should be the start of a process, but here it looks like that was the end of it.
  • That's because in the modern age, when the FCC Media Bureau sends a huge media transaction to the judge for hearing, it's the death knell. The pending transaction involving KLKN actually has this as an issue! I've added some more clarity.

I will do spotchecks tomorrow. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:53, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

• @Mike Christie: Responses: Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 03:13, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Spotchecks (footnote numbers refer to this version):

• FN 1 cites "Channel 20 was allocated to Salt Lake City in 1952". Verified.
• FN 34 cites "The approval came even though KSTU and KSL-TV expressed renewed concern over a high-power channel 13 in Salt Lake City causing problems for the translator system." Verified, but I'd suggest changing to "had expressed", since this is prior to the approval.
• FN 43 cites "with MWT to operate channel 20 until channel 13 was ready to be activated and then surrender the channel 20 license". Verified, but should be p. 73, not 83.
• FN 51 cites "but the Utah Supreme Court discarded the monetary award in 2001 and ordered another trial be held, finding that the trial judge had improperly instructed jurors". Verified.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Caught the typo on footnote 34. Thanks. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:57, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Fixes look good; passing. I left a note above about PressPass. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:09, 20 April 2023 (UTC)