The more than 26,000 Insight customers in southcentral Kentucky may notice slight changes on their television lineup.

&#8220We now have a local CBS affiliate,” Insight Communications General Manager Rick Williams said. &#8220There’s always a few people who don’t hear about the changes.”

WNKY’s CBS signal is now channel 10 on the Insight Cable channel lineup, displacing Nashville’s WTVF’s signal to channel 30.

&#8220By federal law, the local station gets to be designated as the primary carrier as a broadcast affiliate on the cable system,” Williams said.

In some cases, when the distant signal stations aren’t as strong, they are forced off the system. That has characterized what has happened in the past, when WBKO launched its digital WBKO-FOX channel, forcing WZTV in Nashville to be booted off the cable lineup.

There’s only so much room on a cable system and bandwidth is very precious, Williams said.

&#8220There is a limit to the number of channels we can have on. We realize that customers would like to have access to every channel in the world. But its just not possible, not to mention its also not legal,” Williams said.

Channel 30 used to hold UPN, but when UPN and WB merged and became CW it created an open space on the lineup. Insight placed the Eternal Word Television Network or EWTN as a placeholder on channel 30 until negotiations were finished with WNKY.

&#8220It is important to keep the Nashville connection. We are glad to be able to maintain access to that for our customers,” Williams said.

EWTN has moved to channel 69.

Max Media, owner of WNKY, the local NBC affiliate, announced the launch of the new CBS station in October.

The ongoing transition from the current analog signal to digital signals has created the ability for five different television networks to be broadcast through two stations, Williams said. ABC, FOX, and the CW come from WBKO, while WNKY carries NBC and CBS signals.

The government push to clear the analog spectrum – the part of the communication bandwidth that broadcasters have always used to communicate their television signals – has a deadline of February 2009, Williams said.

That’s because the government is slowly reclaiming the analog spectrum to one day sell it off for other services, mainly for the increasing wireless demand.

Ed Groves, president and general manager of WNKY, said in October that the Bowling Green-southcentral Kentucky area was one of the very few television markets without a CBS affiliate.

It was only about three years ago when WNKY moved out of its cramped headquarters on Chestnut Street to a large facility on Emmett Avenue with new equipment, including its Accuweather technology, which Groves said helped the station attract Chris Sowers, &#8220the market’s first true meterologist.”

John Trinder, president of Max Media, said in October that adding the CBS signal to WNKY is a part of its long-term plans.

&#8220The addition of CBS is the next step in our long-term plans to grow our presence in the market,” Trinder said.

Bowling Green is ranked as the 183rd television market in the U.S., according to Nielsen Media Research.

For the 9,000 cable customers in the greater Glasgow and Barren County area served by the Glasgow Electric Plant Board, the new CBS channel is still only a request.

On Tuesday, Groves will go before an ad hoc committee for the plant board, which makes all programming decisions, to determine if customers in the Glasgow area will get WNKY’s CBS signal.

Groves made the request in November, according to Billy Ray, general manager.