New DTV Search Page Unveiled on CDBS
Another omen of the coming DTV Transition – the FCC has added a new search option to its CDBS Public Access menu. Now you have the option of clicking on “Search for DTV Station Information”, which will whisk you to a query page that permits searches based on call sign, facility ID number, channel, city/state of license, network affiliation and even Nielsen DMA. You can also opt to include or exclude LPTV and Class A stations from your search. Interestingly, while you can include “network” as part of your search, the results do not identify any station’s network. For example, you can insert “ABC” in the network search field and the system will throw up a list of stations, all of them presumably ABC affiliates. But if you simply search for, say, “KABC-TV”, it will find that station, but will not identify it as an ABC affiliate. Also, the results table does not list the states or the Nielsen markets in which the found stations are located.
This is, presumably, a work in progress, so we might see some changes in it as people try it out and bugs get worked out. We have one request of any debuggers who might be reading this – could you please make the wild card character “%”, rather than “*”. It’s not that we’re in love with “%”, but “%” is the wild card character that is (and has historically been) used on all other CDBS Public Access search pages, and it seems a bit silly to use a different one for this particular page. We’re just sayin’ . . .
This has been available for years.
While some of the data available at the new site have previously been available on CDBS, the new CDBS DTV search page is indeed a new and centralized way for the public to access those data. The FCC certainly thinks so -- check out CDBS Public Access (http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/cdbs_pa.htm), where you will find that the Commission itself has designated the DTV search page as "New". Additionally, as noted in my post, the new page allows searching by network and Nielsen DMA, neither of which search fields is available elsewhere on CDBS Public Access.