The TV-Channel Bug Bugaboo With Hulu

Finally occurred to me this evening. Wife's binge-ing a network series on Hulu, off the app on our teevee set.

It's an ABC series (okay, it's Black-Ish - what's it been on now, 27 years or so...?). Hulu's got a bunch of series streaming that are also currently broadcasting on local affiliates, no big deal.

Then I noticed, it's got the Channel 27 bug in the corner of the screen, and for the first time I realized...every television market in the country right now, has a subscriber who could be streaming a tv show their local ABC, or NBC, or whatever, affiliate is also carrying right now, this minute...and, seeing their own local tv station bug in the lower-right-hand corner of their screen.

How exactly does this happen? I mean, obviously they're not taping all the affiliates on the continent, for all the shows they have a right to re-stream, no matter what network it's on, and how old the show is, right?

And what happens, if they have a series like, I dunno, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which started on FOX, then dropped it, and NBC picked it up? If you stream the first three seasons, do you get your local FOX affiliate bug in the corner, then at the point where NBC picks it up and you stream those, does your local NBC affiliate bug replace that on those episodes?

I know, this is stupid stuff to worry about, but...somebody's probably got an answer for this.

 

They obviously have some kind of downstream keyer running the whole time(it turns into the Ad countdown if you have that setup) and they must fly it in over a clean file. My guess would be that whatever network has the rights to air it would have that lower-third bug, in the same way that old Paramount shows now have the CBS Television Distribution logo at the tail(due to CBS's acquisition of the catalog).



Dan

 

Thanks! I...got some of that...