After years of having the worst digital picture in Oklahoma City, due both to outdated equipment and active indifference on the part of its owners, KFOR shocked everyone a few weeks ago by becoming the first commercial OKC TV station to broadcast its news in high-definition. It's impressive, and it is beautiful. It's a huge improvement, mostly because their SD picture (used for all news before the switch) gives a blurry, washed-out, unsaturated picture. KFOR's HD picture is better than the SD pictures of the other network affiliates in town.

KFOR's SD picture remains noticeably worse than every other station's, reported to be because the station owners have refused to update the broadcast equipment since 1996 or so. (It runs OS/2. I'm not kidding.)

Unfortunately, that kind of "do it on the cheap, no one will care" mentality continues to dominate KFOR's management. KFOR has not updated the rest of its way-too-old equipment, so the station (like all others in OKC other than OETA) still can't record and play back HD programming. All syndicated programming is not just in SD, but in the crappiest SD you can imagine. The 10PM newscast is beautiful in HD, but the 3AM rerun is in crappy SD because they can't even record their own live broadcasts in HD and retransmit them. Word over at HDTVOK is that KFOR doesn't play to update this equipment to HD for a few more years.

Another part of the "cheap" mentality is refusing to sacrifice local ads even when it drives viewers crazy. I wrote this over two years ago about KFOR's severe weather coverage compared to its competition:

A day earlier, KOCO had done it right, though - they left their prime-time HDTV signal active, updating people on storms during the commercial breaks, going so far as to emphasize "You're not missing any of your programming."

During the same storm period, KFOR-DT dropped shows like Heroes out of HDTV to show a weather map on the screen, and broke into programming to talk about storms outside the broadcast area. When the commercials came up, KFOR removed the weather map and let the commercials air uninterrupted. KOCO (and even Sinclair's KOKH-DT) did it the other way around - weather map on analog channels, HDTV undisturbed, updates during commercials. They bypassed some ad revenue to serve their viewers who weren't affected and update those who were. KFOR interrupted everyone's programs, so its viewers didn't see their programs and still saw all the commercials. KFOR sacrificed nothing.

And, really, that's my major beef: for KFOR, it's all about the appearance of looking concerned about severe weather without actually being concerned. They didn't give up a single ad dollar, but they interrupted high-rated programs to put the weather guy on to look concerned about storms affecting people who couldn't possibly receive his broadcasts.

Now, I know from feedback I've received and from complaints I've read elsewhere that I'm nowhere near the only person who notices this or who gets annoyed by it. With KOCO and KWTV all doing the right thing, KFOR has definitely felt the pressure. So, starting this year, they break into HD programs at the commercial breaks for severe weather updates if the storm is not life-threatening. Thunderstorms moved through OKC tonight, and KFOR responded by in-commercial weather updates. Hooray!

Except…no, no cheers. KFOR refuses to give up the ad revenue for its local commercials, even as it has adapted to giving up the revenue of the NBC ads. So, on nights when they break into primetime programming for weather updates, what do they do?

They run 2-3 extra minutes of ads after the local news, pre-empting the first 2-3 minutes of The Tonight Show.

They did it tonight, finally starting the show in Conan's second? maybe third? joke. (They can't tape-delay it by 2-3 minutes because they can't record and rebroadcast HD programming. If they try that, the resulting washed-out broadcast is so ugly I can't bear to watch it.)

What's worse is that 30 seconds of the ads running instead of The Tonight Show were KFOR's own promos, for the station's own programs or promotions. We didn't get to see monologue jokes because KFOR wanted to let people watching at 10:35 PM know they needed to log onto the station's Web site at 9AM sharp tomorrow morning to buy "half-price" gift certificates to a local restaurant. It was a ten-second promo stretched into 30 seconds very inelegantly, playing instead of actual programming.

So, to be clear, here are the Ads that KFOR ran instead of showing NBC programming in an attempt to short-change viewers late at night because competition won't let them do it during prime-time anymore:

• "I need This.com" local online business directory

• Oklahoma Toyota dealers

• "Half Off Deals" for $50 gift certificates at "The Old Mill" restaurant at KFOR's Web site

• Academy Sports & Outdoors (a 15-second spot, cut off in the last second apparently in an attempt to finally air The Tonight Show)

If you run one of those four businesses, please contact KFOR for a refund of your ad price because they aired your spot over scheduled programming. You paid to make sure that I won't be purchasing your goods or services, and that's really not what your ad budget should go for.

And KFOR? Stop it. If you're unwilling to give up your local ads even for severe weather coverage, stop pretending otherwise and trying to sneak them over actual programming like people won't notice. We notice. We're keeping track. We won't patronize businesses whose ads you air instead of actual programming. Your giant-ass weather map already completely covers up Conan's face (or Jimmy Fallon's) during their interviews, your SD picture is embarrassing, and doing news in HD doesn't give you "the benefit of the doubt" to air stupid commercials over network programming.

(It should go without saying that during all this, the 4-2 "24-hour weather channel" continued completely unchanged with no severe weather coverage of any kind—not even the weather map you had imposed over Conan's face. At 11:08 PM on Tuesday night, while 4-1 is warning of severe thunderstorms, 4-2 is showing Mike Morgan in a segment taped in late afternoon saying there "might" be severe weather tonight. Then live radar with techno music. Then back to a seven-hour-old weather segment. It's a joke and a waste of broadcast transmission. Either use the damn channel for actual weather coverage or turn it off.)

Trust me, KFOR: if you actually cared about the viewers, it would be evident. You don't, and that's evident too.