Talk:UHF (film)

@Carlb, this really isn't the place for an extended essay on the history of UHF television. I think maybe you should move the paragraphs you've added into a Useful Note on UHF TV.

I've chopped this in length, by about half. If it's still long, maybe move it to UHF/Trivia instead of starting yet another subpage?

I don't mean a subpage of the movie, I mean a top-level useful note page about the UHF technology. The movie is not where someone will go to look for information on the history of TV.

That would likely not be useful, as it would duplicate American Television Stations.

Struggling Broadcaster, on the other hand, might be a viable trope if it doesn't already exist in some form.

Whatever. It just doesn't belong in the middle of a page about a movie.

For the sake of appeasing everybody, try American Television Stations/Trivia to put it.

I've just moved "UHF" to "UHF (film)", to make room for a disambiguation. (Hands up, everyone who already knew that there are two bands named UHF.) We now have room for a page called "UHF (Useful Notes)" that would discuss the technology used in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA. While this would overlap "American Television Stations", it wouldn't duplicate the page.

If there are two "bands", then one should be named VHF and the other UHF... or one should be AM and the other FM. :)

Nonetheless, a version of the American Television Stations article but for other countries should probably be Terrestrial Television Stations or something. The history of UHF channels as poor cousin of their VHF counterpart is only one small part of a broader history of over-the-air broadcasting.

We could rename the page "American Television Stations" to "Terrestrial Television Stations", if that's the route people want to go. Electromagnetism doesn't become something completely different depending on which side of the 49th parallel or the Rio Grande it's on, so a Useful Notes article that concentrates on the technical aspects shouldn't make that distinction.

But if we're going to keep the current page "American Television Stations" as a Useful Notes article that concentrates on the historical aspects, then shouldn't the technical discussion go on a different page altogether?

Exactly what do we want this hypothetical article to be about?

Maybe Mexican watts are different.

In any case, UHF (film) is based on the US system, where originating stations are local (not regional), each local station owns its own transmitter and VHF is intermixed with UHF in the same markets. As such, whatever info was removed from this article would fit in American Television Stations and the lone Market-Based Title point can stay here. No need to create a new article.

Certainly, there is a place for disambiguation of titles like UHF or Titanic as both refer to concepts (a band of broadcast frequencies, a magnificent ocean liner - respectively) which extend beyond one random work (a "Weird Al" film, and a James Cameron flick). For these search terms, it may make sense to define the term and then disambiguate. "The RMS Titanic, a luxury steamship, is the pride of the White Star Line. It features prominently in works like A Night To Remember and Titanic (film)..." as the Cameron film isn't necessarily the only (or even the best) work to reference the topic.

There is some overlap to Trope Workshop:Struggling Broadcaster if the weakest of the struggling independents often did end up w-a-a-y up the dial on some awkward high-UHF frequency, but that article is more about content than broadcasting history or the underlying technology. WJM 12 is enough of a joke too, and it's a VHF station.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're suffering from a case of Small Reference Pools (and not purposefully trying to troll the non-American member of the mod team). What you call "the US system" was not unique to the USA.

Your reply tells me that you're looking at this from a historical and social lens - which is good, because that view is very tropable. Do we need a discussion of the technology at all?

UHF (film) was shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's why I mention the US.

As for the Small Reference Pool? I think I can still get one digital subchannel of Canadian TV over the air here - and it's a VHF station. Everything else looks to be American, at least for OTA DTV. And no, I'm not in Tulsa.

I'd suspect that we'd only care about the underlying technology (or the underlying commercial and regulatory environment) at the point where it actually starts affecting content. We'd want the history, sure, but the technology is incidental at best.

For instance, a US digital station can transmit multiple programmes at the same time, ie: WNPI-DT23 (18.1 PBS-HD, 18.2 Create, 18.3 World, 18.4 PBS Kids). You can't do that with an Ottawa-licensed station, short of getting a separate broadcast licence for each digital subchannel. In the UK, where the Freeview transmitters are BBC-owned and shared between multiple rival broadcasters? Entirely different ball of wax.

That affects content as a flood of new US networks of mediocre quality are popping up (MeTV, AntennaTV, Bounce, Laff, Escape...) just as space filler to show "classic" re-runs on all of these extra subchannels. That's not going to happen over-the-air in Canada because of that country's regulatory environment.

"the technology is incidental at best."

Then why bother adding it to this wiki?

I'm sure this could be added to some Trivia/Analysis subpage as a compromise if that's what this issue is.

If it's tropable, sure. If it's incidental, well...