NBC HD: bye-bye birdie in Rock Hill, S.C.
The NBC peacock is flying south for the winter; at least the HD version of it is if you're a cable subscriber in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Comporium is the local cable company there and apparently, they couldn't come to terms with the local NBC affiliate, WCNC, on 20 hours of weekly high-def programming. WCNC is Charlotte-based and was looking to nab a monthly fee of roughly $5 for the programming according to Comporium. WCNC indicates that the monthly charge is just fraction of that figure, and that other cable providers pay these types of fees.
While we think it stinks that the Rock Hillites won't get NBC in high-def during the Olympics, we see that on a Google HDTV mashup map, they're about 25 miles from the Charlotte HD towers as the peacock crow flies. All we can say is: save your monthly $5 and consider pulling in WCNC for free via an ATSC tuner and a solid antenna. On the plus side, the HD programming is a net wash for the Comporium customers as their local NBC HD feed will be replaced by Universal-HD; an even better reason to tune in WCNC for free in HD!
