Rob Sama is one of those outliers who still relies on a traditional antenna to pull in TV. So he was surprised to discover that Channel 7 is moving to Channel 42:

... None of this bothered me terribly, except for the fact that I now had to reprogram my DVR to record off of 42 instead of 7. But it also seems as if at the same time they made this announcement, they turned down the signal strength on channel 42, so that now it doesn't come in smoothly like it used to, but cuts out periodically, making NBC basically unwatchable. ...

Interesting: Max Slocum talks to the folks at NBC affiliate WHDH and reports they have nothing to do with the brand-new local news site that NBC is building for Boston and, in fact, have no intentions of shutting down their existing whdh.com. Slocum adds NBC officials declined to comment.

You might recall there's little love lost between NBC and Channel 7 - the former threatened to pull the latter's affiliation when it seemed it wouldn't run Jay Leno's 10 p.m. show.

nbcboston.com is registered to General Electric, i.e., NBC, although there's no site there yet.

UPDATE: Could be that NBC is going to compete with its own affiliate rather than revamp the Channel 7 site.

Looks like a major overhaul is coming for Channel 7's Web site. NBC Local is advertising for a city editor for an entirely new Web site that will look something like this:

But just in case, keep a bucket of water handy.

To air Leno at 10 p.m. after all rather than 79th straight hour of local news.

Station owner Ed Ansin said, presumably with a completely straight face: "Jay is from Andover, where I went to school. I enjoy his humor."

The Globe story is by Johnny Diaz, so naturally it doesn't explain what might have really led to Ansin's change of heart.

Michael Page reports that Channel 7 management thinks its viewers would rather see more Frances and Kim news at 10 p.m. than Jay Leno. No word on when, if at all, they'll show his new show, which will appear at 10 p.m (9 p.m. Central) in the rest of the country.

The Dig's Media Farm is in fine form this week, with their takedown of the post-Priceian newscasts on Channel 7:

... So now, Frances Rivera has been joined by Kim Khazei. Together, they man the prime 7News broadcast, dressed in almost comical vampy outfits that mark a very different direction indeed, putting the WTF in Sefen Newz at 11 (we smell a promo!).

For example, during a newscast last week, Rivera was dressed in a vest over a frilly shirt by some sadistic wardrobe person, and Khazei was clearly still nervous after a month on the job, kicking off a story, "And new at 10 tonight, surprising results from a survey of lung yocal people." Ah. ...

Nice to see "the news station" sent Matt Lorch down to New Jersey to cover the Adolf Hitler Campbell cake drama, although it is a bit distressing that they couldn't find an alliterative headline to go with it (Really, Channel 7, "FROSTY RECEPTION" was the best you could do?) and that, well, we were all talking about the story two days ago.

How come all of Channel 7's programming is off by an hour? I was watching the late Today show at 11am when I realized their clock said 10. Channel 7 News at Noon came on at 1pm, but was live and did not say anything about a late broadcast. Their clock also said 12pm when it was actually 1.

Anyone in the media savvy world know what gives?

Lance and friends provide the live blow-by-blow here and here, complete with incisive commentary on all the Channel 7 ads and stuff:

If there is one guy who should have got a whoopin' when he was in school, it's Matt Lorch.