The CW's Poor Broadcasting Quality?

I think this problem is universal. I have seen at least half a dozen affiliates through several different sources; cable, satellite and even antennae. HD or SD it did not seem to matter. The sound was usually muddled or generally odd, and the video seems like something out of a 90's low budget made for tv movie or music video. This is the prime time stuff too. I would hate to even see the mid-morning soaps or early paid programming. This should be fixed before they ever attempt to ever try something serious. It will always be a throwaway network unless this is done.

I guess a general lack of funds and technical know how is rampant through this network, but then again, I haven't seen every affiliate's broadcast. I will give them that.

I live in Utah and The CW has always looked and sounded terrible. The picture is formatted improperly so it's stretched horizontally and the edges of the frame vanish entirely.

The remote for my Toshiba TV has a button labeled "Pic Size" that lets me switch between 16:9 and 4:3 formats. You might want to check and see if you have something similar. (Or it could be buried in the setup menus somewhere.)

Also, the sound is mixed really poorly and always sounds very staticky, with the music being just as loud or louder than the actors' voices.

It was probably mixed that way by the production company, and there's nothing your affiliate can do about that.

Where I live, The CW is a subchannel on the ABC affiliate (where I used to work). All of the CW programming passed through a couple racks of equipment behind the master control position. The CW system was completely automated, including local commercial and ID insertion. We hardly ever did any local switching on it unless we had to swap out one infomercial for another.

First of all, it's not fair to blame a TV distribution network for the technical shortcomings of one TV station that carries that network, or perhaps a problem with your gear at home. What you describe as "picture is formatted improperly so it's stretched horizontally and the edges of the frame vanish entirely" is called "overscan", and it's a built-in "feature" of consumer TV sets. Why would you blame "the CW" for that?

I've tried the station on five different TVs of different technical merits and it's always overscanned, while no other channels appear that way. If I OnDemand the shows through my Xfinity, they are properly matted and fitted on the screen. I just wanted to know if The CW appears that way when it airs everywhere or if it is regional.

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As I mentioned before, the CW is a TV distribution network that has little to do with what you finally see. Perhaps it's the broadcaster that airs the CW programming that you see. If, as alabel-1 noted, the CW programming is on a subchannel >1, it's in a 4:3 SD aspect ratio. (The few stations that air HD secondary channels are not CW feeds.) Sometimes subchannel data is set incorrectly by the broadcaster, or interpreted incorrectly by some TV sets or tuning adapters.