Consider this an early warning, but Time Warner Cable, the area's biggest TV programming provider, has released its new digital channel lineup -- which will go into effect in October 13 for subscribers in southeast Wisconsin.
Only digital channels 100 and above are affected in this attempt to organize offerings by themes.
For example, kids' channels will be between 101 and 117, premium channels will be in the 600s and HD channels will start at 1004, with Channel 4's HD signal. Some channels available now in the analog lineup will be duplicated in the digital lineup as part of the regrouping.
Among the things that will be disrupted by the shuffle are parental controls and personalized features, like the channel that pops up when you turn the TV on and favorite channels. It wouldn't hurt to doublecheck scheduled DVR or VCR recordings.
Time Warner also serves northeast Wisconsin, and similar changes go into effect Oct. 6 in Marinette and Oct. 8 in the rest of the region.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
