Washed out look on television?????

[pronghornproductions]

I have been producing an outdoor show that I have been airing on our local Fox station. I am 4 weeks in and it would seem that 2 of the for episode have looked really washed out when the have aired. I always check the footage after I transfer it back to mini dv before sending it out for captioning and conversion, and it looks fine. But when aired it looks really washed out when viewed on the same set that I preview the show on. It is being converted to DV cam format for the station, is it possible to loose color resolution during the conversion? Or is it something the engineers at the station are doing when they air it?
I now think that maybe if I saturate the color in the footage in post , maybe it will make a difference, I just can't figure out why it would change from the time I send it out til airing???????? Anyone have any suggestions as to what might be causing this?

 

[kplo]

How are you defining "washed out"? Are the black levels pushed up into the gray area, or are the blacks correct and the color simply desaturated?
The problem could be ocurring in the transfer from MiniDV to DVcam or when the station converts that to MPEG for insertion into their server. Personal experience indicates the latter is more likely. The encoding process can really mess up your show if not done carefully.
I presume you have proper bars and tone at the head of your show, and that those values reflect the actual content regarding CC and levels.
Hope this helps.
Ken
the Screen Skins guy