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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/WBPX-TV/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Hog Farm via FACBot (talk) 28 September 2022 [1].

WBPX-TV

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Nominator(s): Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 22:22, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

After a decade of planning, in January 1979, Boston gained another commercial television station. Conceived as a vehicle for scrambled over-the-air subscription broadcasting, WQTV provided such (and some commercial fare) for four years and was one of the first STV systems to fold completely in 1983. The station became a commercial independent but succumbed to very high programming costs at the end of 1985, being sold to The Christian Science Monitor. WQTV would be the springboard for the Monitor to make an expensive expansion into television that included a nightly national news program, a cable service, and programming seen as worthy but dull. It so strained the Church of Christ, Scientist, that its religious functions came under threat from TV losses. The church exited broadcasting at a steep loss in 1992 and 1993, selling the station to Boston University, which renamed it WABU-TV. It operated as an independent with some distinctive local programs and also professional sports coverage. BU sold it in 1999 to Paxson Communications Corporation, owner of the national Pax network (thus the current WBPX-TV call sign), and since then it has largely or entirely been a pass-through for programming from elsewhere. In each of its eras of history, channel 68 has reflected trends in television technology and economics.

This is my first FAC, though several more are conceivable given my inventory of existing and planned GAs. It is also the first FAC for an article on an individual television station; a radio station passed FAC eight years ago. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 22:22, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Support from Vami

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Reserving a spot, as promised. –♠Vamí_IV†♠ 06:35, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Federal Communications Commission [...] FCC Can you add "(FCC)" after the first instance of "Federal Communications Commission" in the article prose?
  • I normally do this now...but I guess I didn't here.
  • [...] which the [FCC] granted after hearing [...] Should this be a hearing?
  • Reworded
  • Even though a construction permit had been awarded in 1969, it would be nearly a decade before viewers saw channel 68 on their screens. This could be written more clinically.
  • Done
  • Blonder-Tongue Laboratories [...] B-T Another acronym that needs introduction. Acronyms may not immediately jump out at and be understood by everyone, especially with several of them in play, and especially especially with all these radio names.
  • Done
  • Is this an overlinking case?
  • [...] Star was the 8th-largest service [...] At the end of January, Star's [...] the end for Star [...] switch Star's subscribers [...] Should be "STAR", no?
  • Why use "Satellite Television & Associated Resources" after introducing the STAR acronym?
  • Taking these together. The main reason is that we have two identically named subjects: the company STAR and the service Star. (In San Francisco, where they also operated, they called themselves Star TV, using mixed case, and they also did so less consistently in Boston.) The Boston Globe prints the latter as Star in mixed case. Then you get ads like this that mix "Star" and "STAR-TV" (with hyphen). So I have Star, STAR, STAR TV, and STAR-TV all used in their own advertising. If you think the service should also be labeled STAR all caps, I would not object. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 16:41, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • [...] but the station would attract a Boston institution with no television experience and big broadcasting dreams. No citation? Good reason to cut this if yes.
  • Done (I wanted some connective tissue for narrating originally)
  • The actual licensee, the Christian Science Monitor Syndicate, was formed because the newspaper employed only Christian Scientists, not possible for a broadcast station because of equal employment opportunity laws. I feel the back-half of this could benefit from some rewording; something like "[...] only employed Christian Scientists, a practice disbarred for broadcast stations by equal employment opportunity laws."
  • Done
  • [...] on WQTV by spring 1990 [...]} Possibly misleading for readers in the Southern Hemisphere; MOS:SEASON.
  • Done
  • [...] newsmagazine [...] newsgathering [...] Are these typos?
  • No, they are not
  • He was replaced by John Palmer [...] Whomst
  • Done
  • [...] which had finally ditched Monitor Channel fare and was airing syndicated shows instead. This could be written more clinically.
  • On displaying inflation for money sums, I have thus far seen it used once in the article, and with a titanic footnote for the figure and calculation. I would advise simply using Template:Inflation, and using often.
  • Bridge cites three outside factors for having sealed the channel's fate [...] This could be simplified; "cites three outside factors that sealed the channel's fate". I note here, with mention to the earlier use of "[the] eleventh hour", that your prose is rich with English idioms and phrases that might not be known or understood by readers for whom English is not a native language.
  • [...] and the association of an "internal opposition" with the Boston Globe. Should be "The Boston Globe" (or just "the Globe", as before) here, no?
  • Yes, good catch.
  • [...] including a local personality who would move to WFXT: Butch Stearns. Is this man relevant to the story of the station?
  • A lot of local TV station articles for stations with news departments have lists of notable former employees. This one doesn't (since no news), but Stearns is high-profile enough to merit mention as having worked here. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 03:26, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the FCC's incentive auction, WDPX-TV [...] Whomst
  • Done by adding a mention of the call sign change of WZBU
I am pleased to support this Featured Article Candidacy. –♠Vamí_IV†♠ 03:36, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mike Christie

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I know nothing about the TV business, so some of these questions may seem obvious to you.

  • "It is owned by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Woburn-licensed Grit station WDPX-TV (channel 58), which also shares WBPX-TV's spectrum under a channel sharing agreement." If I understand correctly; I would rephrase as "It is owned by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, which also owns Woburn-licensed Grit station WDPX-TV (channel 58); the two channels share the same TV spectrum." If that's not the intended meaning then I don't understand the sentence.
    • It is the right meaning, and you probably have a good point in making it a touch less jargony.
  • I see Hudson is near Boston, but it appears to be not in the city limits; why do we say this is a TV station "in Boston"?
    • Boston is the city of license that appears on legal documents. The transmitter may be in another adjacent city (for instance, for the Boston area, many TV towers are in Needham, Massachusetts). It is also not uncommon, for instance, for a TV station to be located in a suburb of the city it serves now or some other related city (KCPQ, likely my next FAC, is nominally allotted to Tacoma, Washington, but it has been based in Seattle since the mid-1990s). As a note, the Ion stations do not have local studios: the FCC lists a main studio in Cincinnati, Ohio, for WBPX-TV, because that's where the programming for Ion and the other national services they carry originates. [2]
  • I think the time between 1983, when the subscription TV ended, and 1986, when the Monitor acquired it, should be covered in the lead, if only briefly. Similarly I would explain the transition to Ion -- saying that Pax was the forerunner to Ion, as we do now, doesn't tell the reader what happened.
  • What is a "comparative hearing"?
    • Prior to 1996, the comparative hearing process was used by the FCC to determine a winner in applications for the same television channel or radio station, or that were otherwise mutually exclusive.
      Is there a link we could add? Or a footnote to explain this? The term is opaque to someone unfamiliar with the business. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      I have added a footnote for now. An article may be useful in the future. The term seems very associated with the FCC now that I search it more broadly; most of the hits are pages I've helped to write.
  • "along with some productions of the newspaper": it took me a second to understand this. How about "along with some material [or programs] produced by the newspaper"?
    • Done.
  • What is a "superstation feed"? Come to that, what's a superstation?
    • A superstation was a major-market TV station with certain desirable programs—sports, news, entertainment, etc.—that was uplinked by another company for distribution to cable systems nationwide. WWOR-TV in New York City was one of these. In 1990, new rules called syndication exclusivity meant that superstations had to modify their programming for national distribution to avoid overlapping programming with that aired by local TV stations. This resulted in the uplink firm, a company called Eastern Microwave (EMI), creating the WWOR EMI Service. They filled in with Monitor Channel and other programming they could obtain from elsewhere when they didn't have the rights to nationally broadcast what was being seen in New York.
      Interesting. Again is there an article we could link to? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Done: Superstation. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:28, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is Netty Douglass worth a red link?
    • No, I can barely find SIGCOV of her after this.
  • "the Monitor Channel offered World Monitor for air to cable systems free for two years, as long as the system added the service at the end of that period": I don't understand the second half of this.
    • The idea was that a cable system with a public access or local origination channel might throw World Monitor on that, and by the time the system was ready to add new channels (in many cases systems were at capacity due to technical limitations and there was also a lot of uncertainty about potential regulatory changes), they'd add the Monitor Channel.
      I think I follow you. So would this be OK: "the Monitor Channel offered World Monitor for air to cable systems free for two years, as long as the cable system added Monitor Channel to their service at the end of that period"? You may feel that's repetitive, but I have to say I didn't follow the shorter version. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      That's fine and done.
  • "that had come to reach the core religious functions of the Church of Christ, Scientist": suggest "that by now were affecting the core religious functions of the Church of Christ, Scientist".
  • Done
  • "Harvey W. Wood—a supporter of the media expansion": suggest "Harvey W. Wood—who had been a supporter of the media expansion", since the point is presumably that he's resigning because his past support proved misguided.
  • Done
  • "with the station losing $5 million a year, Kevin Dunn was successful in obtaining the rights through a company known as JCS": who is Kevin Dunn? Presumably a media market player of some kind?
  • His name is used in a lot of the media reporting, but I can't tell you what he did after! (Probably because the Red Sox kicked him out of the deal after one year for failure to pay)

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:34, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie: Addressed each of your topics. Some are TV explainers, some are good ideas to tweak. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 17:12, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie: Addressed second round of issues. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:28, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Those all look good; just one last thing -- you need a source for the helpful footnote you just added. Once that's in place I will support. By the way, I don't know if you've noticed but I've been tweaking your indents. WP:INDENTMIX is the relevant documentation; the rule is to repeat whatever the previous poster did and then add a colon or asterisk, depending on whether you want a simple indent or a bullet. The reason it matters is that when a visually impaired editor using a screen reader encounters indents, it will make a mess of the indent levels and tell the editor that the list has been restarted in the middle, instead of making it clear what is a reply to what. So it's a nice thing to try to get right. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:37, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie: I've been trying to improve on that. I just added two refs into the footnote. There's a possible article here. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 21:07, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a bonus! Supporting now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:12, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:12, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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Footnote numbers refer to this version.

  • Per WP:RSP, prnewswire.com is an unreliable source.
  • What's the logic behind your choice of when to use the publisher and work/website/newspaper parameters? You can have almost any reasonable logic behind how you use these parameters, but it has to be consistent. It looks like you're consistently omitting publisher for cite news, which is fine, but [98] omits the work/website/newspaper parameter too. For cite web, [4] & [114] have a publisher but no work/website, and [120] has neither.
  • [5] is incompletely cited.

That's all I can see for formatting. I will look at links and reliability later today. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Replaced the PR Newswire item with an actual news article. (IABot is down, so I cannot archive right this moment.) [5], the history cards link, was a template invocation of {{FCC letter}}—and I've added hundreds of these to this kind of article. I've been trying to consider ways to get it to use/interact with Cite web, but I'm not quite sure how to do so and have IABot respond to it. It needs an overhaul anyway as I suspect every transclusion will need to be changed due to a years-long database transition at the FCC.
  • The omission on [98] was unintended. This was before I began using PressPass to preformat newspapers.com citations. Articles of newer creation/expansion will generally be more consistent in the availability of citation information. The others have either had a website added or been updated to a higher-quality citation I've since begun to use.
  • I've made a few tweaks to bring most everything under the work parameter. With website/publisher, I try and separate organization names from the website in general (or database names). Ping to Mike Christie. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 18:26, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    For [4], wouldn't it be more consistent to make it "website=Congressional Budget Office", and eliminate the publisher parameter, which you don't use for cite web elsewhere? Similarly for [114]? And for [120], I think you now have a publisher but no website/work parameter; shouldn't it be the other way round for consistency? [5] does like better but unless I've gone cross-eyed it would be better to add the website/work parameter rather than the publisher parameter, as you now have it using cite web. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:56, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Footnote numbers now refer to this version.

  • Some of the newspaper.com archive links don't appear to have archived properly: [11], [12], [28], [47].
  • [34] only archives the first page. Archiving is not an FA requirement, so I wouldn't hold up a pass for this; it's just FYI. I see for other multipage clippings for which you've only archived the first page, so perhaps that's deliberate on your part?
  • [65] and [69] say 1991 in the citation, but they cite the 1992 newspaper.
  • Just noticed that you have "rabbitears.info" as the website; it's better to give the website name than the domain name.

No issues with reliability. That's everything. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed the latter two issues, Mike Christie—these are the things that don't happen with PressPass! Not sure how to fix #1. As to #2, I have many, many, many multipage clippings in my articles. The problem is that {{cite news}} does not support multiple archive-urls, and newspapers.com does not support binding multiple clippings to one URL. This is an issue that, to fix correctly, would require major architecture changes. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:39, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Re the multi-page clippings -- I've always done those as independent citations, but I like your approach better, and I think archiving newspaper.com clippings isn't that important since the original newspaper remains as the underlying source. Re #1, since archiving isn't required for FA, just removing the broken archive links would work. You can also request that archive.org re-archive the link, if you prefer. Sounds like I should know about PressPass; can you post a link? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:50, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie PressPass is here. I removed archives on 11, 12, and 28; 47 works for me. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 21:00, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pass. The source review passes; I removed the URL-status param from those three since it goes in a CS1 maint tracking category if you don't remove it when the archive URL is gone. [47] works for me now too. Any chance I can persuade you to do a FAC review or two, by the way? We can always use more reviewers. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:12, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is my first FAC ever. I'd like some pointers, but I am definitely amenable to learning the ropes of FAC reviewing. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 23:02, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sammi Brie, glad to hear you're willing to try reviewing -- the more reviewers we get, the faster FACs flow through the nominations page, which makes everyone happier. The quicker the older nominations are promoted or archived, the sooner people will get around to reviewing your nomination.

As for pointers, the criteria are at WP:FACR, but you'll find a great deal of variability in the way reviewers approach articles. Some will not edit the article at all, even to do things like fix obvious typos; instead they will post long lists of suggested edits. There's nothing wrong with that, but I find it quicker to make inarguably correct edits myself. I will also copyedit to some degree, though if I think there's any risk at all of changing the intended meaning or if I think the nominator could reasonably disagree on the grammar, I will make it a suggested edit in the review instead.

Source reviews and image reviews are generally handled separately, as you've seen, though any reviewer can raise source or image questions if they want to.

As I said, everyone approaches a review differently, but I can tell you what I've found the most useful way to review. I read the article as a student would -- not trying to memorize the information, but trying to understand it as completely as possible. Whenever I'm not confident I could repeat the information to a third party and get it right, there's something wrong with the article. That includes thinking about the background -- what does a random reader need to know to understand what's going on in the article? Every time the article brings me up short, I have something I need to note in the review.

I would suggest scanning the current FAC page and looking at the different styles of reviewing, and then picking any article that interests you. For a FAC to get promoted it needs a minimum of five reviews -- an image review, a source review, and at least three supports on content -- and the average is closer to six or seven reviews, so I try to review at least that many FACs for each nomination I make. There's no obligation, however, and particularly for newer nominators, everyone understands that it can take a while before they are ready to review. You're an extremely experienced editor, though, and I wouldn't have thought you would have any problems with FAC reviewing. If you keep nominating, you may find some editors are more likely to review your nominations if they notice you've been reviewing.

One thing I do when looking to review articles is to pick older articles, from nearer the bottom of the page. (If you use the nominations viewer, it makes the FAC page a lot easier to navigate.) Articles with only two supports cannot be promoted, so those can languish until someone takes pity on them and reviews them. Three supports doesn't guarantee promotion either, so it doesn't hurt to be the fourth reviewer, particularly if it's on a topic that interests you or where you have some expertise.

I hope that's helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:21, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from TAOT

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  • Can we get a logo for the infobox? Should be doable with a fair use rationale, right? See the logo I uploaded for Bighorn Divide and Wyoming Railroad if you'd like an example. If there's some reason you can't, let me know.
  • The Ion stations do not have a logo listed in their infoboxes (the only logo is that of the network itself). The main problem is that we'd need about 50 NFURs on the page.
  • After being sold to The Christian Science Monitor, WQTV became the nucleus of a major production operation, Can you specify the year the sale happened?
  • Done
  • Both stations were sold in 1999 to become outlets of the Pax network I think this needs a link, I see Pax is wikilinked in the body.
  • It's not wikilinked because it is the same article as Ion.
  • By late 1977, Boston Heritage—a consortium of local owners and New Jersey-based Blonder-Tongue Laboratories—had begun work to build the transmitter on the Prudential Tower, and Blonder-Tongue's pay-TV system was already in use in the New York area. Hang on, is this the same Boston Heritage from the previous paragraph? Shouldn't this information be mentioned when you first introduce Boston Heritage?

This is just a start, I'll add more comments soon. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:56, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't forgotten this, I promise. Work irl has been super busy, but I will add more comments today. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:05, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So I fell behind my self-imposed deadline, but here is another comment. I've been so busy with work irl I just haven't been able to really sit down and take a good look at this. Will try again tomorrow.

  • CanWest was in the middle of assembling a network of stations to air its programming, with outlets in various stages of consideration in Long Island, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Sacramento, California. Recommend dropping the "California", to avoid confusion. A reader unfamiliar with U.S. cities might think that "Detroit, Minneapolis" or "Long Island, Detroit" is a city and state otherwise. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:33, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 05:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, going to structure this and try and make consistent progress. I will follow the orders of the sections in the article.

Lead

  • Consider putting an image within the infobox. This is optional, and a matter of taste. That antenna image might fit nicely in the infobox instead of opposite it.
  • which operated it for six years as commercial independent WABU. Should this be independent commercial station WABU?
  • Both stations were sold in 1999 to become outlets of the Pax network, which changed its name to i in 2005 before adopting the Ion name in 2007. This presupposes the reader is familiar with Ion's history; I believe it would be better to say something along the lines of "before adopting the name Ion in 2007". I do see Ion is identified in the first sentence, but I think it's worth repeating the name here, as we're at the very end of the lead section.

The subscription television years

  • PRISM New England can be linked.
  • This is a nitpick, but I don't like the use of "got" in At the end of January, Star's 23,000 remaining subscribers got Preview program guides for February; it sounds informal. Suggest a synonym.
  • Generally, it's good to avoid 1 sentence paragraphs. Could that last sentence go with the previous paragraph?

Where the stars shine

  • Consider wikilinking the TV shows mentioned in the quotebox.
  • WQTV became an aggressive buyer of programs and an aggressive promoter of its programming and relocated its studio base to a site on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton. Double "and"s are a bit odd to read, a comma before one of the ands would help prevent this from being a run-on sentence.
  • and other titles it owned in perpetuity and aggressively promoting the studios for lease to industrial filmmakers. Recommend changing to "...it owned in perpetuity, along with aggressively promoting..."

Will continue tomorrow. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:38, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Trainsandotherthings: Acknowledging all of these. I did not change the second bullet in Lead — the novelty is that it is running commercially (ad-supported). BU owned (and owns) WBUR-FM, a noncommercial station, so this is a noteworthy status.
I note that the infobox can support an image in addition to a logo, but that use in US stations pages is exceptionally rare. I also do not think that an image depicting equipment no longer in current usage should go in the infobox for this station. If there were an image of the current tower site or, hypothetically, of studios (which WBPX does not have in Boston), then I would consider this. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 04:53, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Christian Science Monitor ownership

  • the newspaper was prestigious but a longtime money-loser for Christian Science. Do you mean the religion or a specific church/organization here?
  • An unsolicited $25 million ($46.3 million in 2021 dollars) offer for WQTV in 1988 was rejected This leave the reader logically wondering who made the offer, do we have information on that?
  • Not beyond "group of outside investors", which I have added. [3]
  • that same year, Canadian journalist Peter Kent joined as reporter and substitute anchor, a post he would hold until the program was shuttered. Might be better to instead say "a post he would hold for the next X years", the information that the program was later shuttered kind of comes out of nowhere.
  • Soft launch can be linked.

Boston University Ownership

  • a silent television station Does this mean it wasn't broadcasting?
  • Yes, it does. Added a link here and used "inactive"

Not really any other comments here, looks good.

Pax and Ion ownership

  • Good call. A note: Mvcg66b3r can be very aggressive at removing duplicate links.

That's really all I have, this article is pretty close to FA status already. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:47, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Trainsandotherthings: Answered all remaining items here. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 01:26, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Happy to Support now. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:28, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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