Cox Cable Channel Change

Monday, August 15, 2011 | Comments (0)

Cox Cable Subscribers will Find Falls Church Cable TV On a New Channel in September

FCC-TV, the City of Falls Church’s cable TV station, will be switching from analog to digital format and moving from Channel 12 to Channel 11 on the Cox cable network on or about Sept. 14. Citizens who subscribe to Verizon Fios and RCN cable will continue to watch FCC-TV on the  same Verizon channel 35 and RCN channel 2.

On Aug. 8, the City Council approved an amendment to the City’s franchise with Cox Communications to address advances in technology. Currently Cox Channel 12 is analog and is shared by the City of Falls Church and the City of Fairfax.  Advances in technology have made it desirable to convert the City’s Channel 12 on Cox from an analog format to a digital format. Cox will provide the necessary equipment for the conversion and will provide the City a one-time grant of $50,000 for capital technology equipment.

With this change on  Cox, the City will have a full – time stand alone channel, instead of sharing Channel 12 with Fairfax City. Anyone who subscribes to Cox cable across Northern Virginia can watch FCCTV on Channel 11 beginning Sept. 14 instead of only being able to watch FCC-TV if they are located in the Falls Church area of Fairfax County as well as in Falls Church City.

With the conversion of Cox from analag to digital, Cox subscribers who already have digital set-top boxes (more than 80% of Cox customers in the City) will not need to do anything. Subscribers who do not have digital set-top boxes can either receive a free digital box from Cox with no rental cost for six months followed by standard monthly equipment rental fee of $5.99 per month per box, or view the new Channel 11 programming using a QAM tuner (QAM stands for quadrature amplitude modulation, the  format by which digital channels are encoded and transmitted via cable television providers). Most TVs sold after 2006 include a QAM tuner. QAM tuners can also be bought separately. Additionally, all cable providers are rapidly converting to digital format so subscribers will need to upgrade  if they wish to receive other channels beyond the City channel. For more information about digital boxes contact Cox at 866-271-7285.

The City’s general government and school facilities will be provided free digital boxes for all general government and school cable drops installed  per the franchise agreement.

As part of the City’s agreement with Cox, the cable company is airing a public service announcement about the channel change for 60 and will post a channel crawl on Channel 12 to alert viewers. This City is also publicizing the channel change on  www.fallschurchva.gov, www.fcctv.net, and in the eFocus newsletter, the schools’ Morning Announcements, and on Facebook.