You know what would have kept/upped interest in antennas? TV stations keeping the same power rather than dropping down on the conversion to digital.
Imagine snagging perfect-looking signals from pretty good distances away......get news and weather you want, sports you want......
I was excited about the prospect of getting as many as eight markets and was making plans to put up a good antenna....turned out I had no easily-measured signal from even one other market....it's a good day when I'm getting all my locals and a great day if I'm getting a rimshot.
By the way, Eastern Iowa (Cedar Rapids/Waterloo/Cedar Falls/Iowa City/Dubuque) is an example of a great OTA (subchannels) market....KCRG, in particular......local sports and events like crazy......
"I don't know the same things you don't know."
"Yes, you do; you just won't admit it!"
"Yeeee...it looks like a 'Belt Buckle & Ball Cap' convention in here......"
Arp2 makes a great point about keeping the same original power. Was this just an easy sell to stations so they could handle a smaller electricity bill, since they had to spend millions to make the conversion? I've stated before how I had a virtually-new antenna that proved to be worthless to me, but a boon to a gentleman living less than half a mile away, but having a primo location on top of our hill overlooking the Ohio River.
"Television is a medium because anything well done is rare."
~ Fred Allen ~
“Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless”-Steve Allen
The FCC wanted to replicate the old ntsc coverage as much as possible with the DTV signal.
So, for example, WSAZ might have had to run 4,000,000 watts ERP to replicate their old coverage.
WOAY, WDTV and WVVA all had that problem. That is a lot of cabinets full of IOT's and many fast
spinning electric meters. Also try to imagine the vertical radiation pattern and the beam tilt and
the lobes and nulls and the size of the feedline that could handle 150,000 watts of average power.
The cost was going to be too much for all but the largest markets. So the FCC dropped the max erp
power to 1,000,000 watts and adjusted everything else to that. It turns out that the dtv signal carries
very well due to the high signal to noise ratio. The reduction did not hurt any but the smaller stations.
Some of the stations that returned to their VHF channels have embarrassingly small transmitters that
are solid state and air cooled. Kinda like a modern FM. We will have to see what happens when the FCC
takes the next step and re-packs the tv stations into a tighter group of channels between, say 20 and 45.
I suspect a lot of the un-used subchannels will be rented out to smaller stations and their xmtrs will go dark.
"Everyone Should be aware that you're just a screen grab away from infamy."
Thank you, Gen! For folks on limited incomes, I'm sure they appreciate their OTA! Now for a dumb question...how many stations extend their signal area by using translators? Is that cost-effective, or just not worth the effort?
"Television is a medium because anything well done is rare."
~ Fred Allen ~
“Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless”-Steve Allen
Translators mostly offer a way to get onto a cable system somewhere.
Some stations have used them to great effect tho.
A translator could protect a community in your market that is poorly
covered by your main xmtr from absorption into an adjacent cable market
or dma. With fiber feeding the cable hubs now, I do not know if this still has
any relevance. I always thought they were a pain.
"Everyone Should be aware that you're just a screen grab away from infamy."
Once the lawsuits are settled and the wireless folks spread enough money around, many smaller market stations and small stations in larger markets will simply sell out their spectrum. Bottom line is that OTA TV will go away except in major markets.
Those of you in rural areas without cable (and there are some) will be on satellite, or will have to resort to the internet.
A boring as hell pdf of todays daily digest release on this subject. Part one.
you can go to the daily digest for even more excitement.
Page 7 has a nice chart of what might happen and some explanations in the following pages help.
Otherwise this is fodder for accountants and lawyers.
"Everyone Should be aware that you're just a screen grab away from infamy."