The result? Drive three blocks west of the Loop, and WMEU dissolves into pixelated macro-blocking. It’s a broadcast station that broadcasts to ghosts . It exists on paper, but not in the electromagnetic ether.
Today, if you tune to 48.1, you get “The U Too.” It is a simulcast of WCIU’s secondary feed. But look deeper at the PSIP (Program and System Information Protocol) data. The metadata is corrupt. The guide data lists shows from 2015. The station has no news department, no sales team, no engineers. It is a skeleton server running on autopilot. wmeu tv
We talk a lot about the death of broadcast TV. But we rarely talk about the between life and death. The result
Do you have a local “zombie station” in your market—a channel number that still exists legally but has no soul? Or is WMEU uniquely Chicago’s ghost in the machine? It exists on paper, but not in the electromagnetic ether
Local DXers (long-distance TV hunters) report something strange. On humid summer nights, when tropospheric ducting occurs, WMEU’s old analog ghost sometimes bleeds into the digital signal. Viewers in Milwaukee and South Bend report seeing a 15-second loop of a 2007 promo for The Steve Wilkos Show superimposed over the current infomercial.
