Where did KDKA traffic reporter Sarah Arbogast go?
Q: I am a regular viewer of the KDKA morning news but missed any announcement of Sarah Arbogast’s departure. Do you know why she left? — JOETA, GREEN TREE
Rob: Ms. Arbogast left for a job outside of broadcasting. The North Versailles native now works as director of communications for Serra Catholic High School in McKeesport. Q: I have a few questions concerning on demand. I have Verizon for my TV and the on demand seems to be getting worse and worse. Some of the sites you now have to pay to get episodes which you never had to do before. Another thing is some of the programs you can’t get on demand anymore. Why is that? And finally it used to be that many of the cable networks you could watch without commercials or very few but now it takes a whole hour to watch because you can’t fast forward at all. I used to enjoy on demand but not so much anymore. Maybe you can shed some light on my concerns.
— BILL, SCOTT TOWNSHIP Rob: There’s definitely a changing landscape for ondemand programming and many content creators are now limiting the amount of time some programs remain free on on demand after their initial broadcast and moving them quicker into the category of “library programming” that the content creators then charge for. The reason? Everyone wants to monetize their content.
That’s also why some ondemand content has commercials with the fast forward disabled. Advertisers want their ads seen.
Q: I was wondering why the local stations keep going back and forth on the viewing format — sometimes it’s letterboxed with the dark areas above and below the TV show. Example: If you watch a football game on KDKA-TV and the same game is on NFL Network it will be the stretched format on KDKA and letterboxed on the NFL Network.
With the letterbox format you see more of the game, the crawl and more graphics. It’s the same with WTAE and WPXI. They had been going back and forth with the formats a lot then both stayed with letterbox for a while and now they’re back to the stretched format.
— DON VIA FACEBOOK Rob: This is a problem that began with the conversion to HDTV and digital in the past decade or so. Letterbox the show and one segment of the population gets upset; stretch it and another segment gets upset, all depending on how caught up they are with current technology.
Turns out, the majority still may not have true HD, which may be why some stations go with stretch over letterbox.
KDKA-TV general manager Chris Pike said, “Since many TVs and set-top boxes still do not support Active Format Description the only way to ensure the majority of viewers see the key action and title is to protect the 4:3 area.”
Mr. Pike said the latest Nielsen data show that only 58 percent of U.S. households are “True HDTV” (16 x 9 TV with an HDTV set-top box and have it connected correctly).
Q: After watching on Oct. 22, it seems apparent that Bebe Neuwirth is leaving “Madam Secretary.” Has she decided to move on to other things?
— GLADYS, BALDWIN BOROUGH Rob: Yes. Around that time she tweeted, “So grateful to @CBS for accepting my request to depart @MadamSecretary and writing a beautiful exit for me.”
Post-Gazette TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions online every Friday in Tuned In Journal blog at post-gazette.com/tv. Here’s a selection of recent queries.