Why Local TV Stations Don't Mention Antenna TV 

He's so right. They talked about antennas and how to best receive the signal A LOT before cable, but now...nothing, ever.

When NBC decided to no longer affiliate with WHDH-TV in Boston, and instead bought a bunch of low-power TV stations to carry the network, the new NBC Boston website did explain how to get the network over the air. But within a year, they stopped doing that.

The last time I had to do a rescan of my TV, there were 44 channels that were being broadcast in my area. Some of them were the same thing, but in a different market, and I deleted them. Next I filtered out the Spanish networks because I don't speak Spanish well enough to know what's going on anyway. Then I filtered out the stations that never broadcast one single show that I like, such as oxygen and lifetime and maybe one or two more, then the home shopping channels. In the end, I was left with 32 stations from which to choose suitable programming. That's a lot of programming 100% free of charge. I remember as a kid, there were like six channels, total. If I didn't like what was on, I got up off my lazy ass, walked over to the TV, and turned the dial one click at a time until I got to 13. The next position was U, which meant a dial under the main dial that went up to 83. With a total of 82 positions on the dials (there was no such thing as channel 1, so the dial started at 2), only six channels to choose from, and nothing of interest on any of them. I spent a lot of time playing outside. Lol... When I read the title of this video, I thought you were talking about Antenna TV, the channel, so I'm thinking to myself "What's wrong with Antenna TV and why is the industry at odds with this one channel? I have to see this one."

Probably to avoid giving Grandpa an aneurysm by letting him know that he could have kept his rabbit ears and watch TV for free.

Been a cord cutter for about 20 years and still rocking the DB8 in the attic. I refuse to pay my telephone company to watch ads on my TV.

Myself an OTA viewer, what I've found peculiar is when a TV station transmitter is having problems, but the TV station itself is unaware of the problem. Over the past five years there's been at least five situations where in the late evening or overnight hours there'll be a glitch with my OTA TV reception with the station going dark. I flip to the station's subchannels, and if they are dark, then it is a strong clue the TV transmitter has problems; or the link from the station to the transmitter site. I'll phone the station, where the overnight news crew will answer the phone. They are surprised to hear about the transmitter problem, as they didn't have a clue of a problem. A short time later I get a call from the station's engineer to inquire about it, as the reception at his house is fine, _since he has cable._ The engineer will ask for my email address. Then over the hours we do text tag where I inform the engineer of what the current reception quality is via a text message, then he'll text me back . . . all the while he and an assistant are trying to resolve the issue with the transmitter. The TV station(s) engineers are appreciative of my assistance to them with resolving the TV transmitting issues. But I seem to be one of the few with OTA reception in the region.

Proud to say that we have never had cable TV. Antennas are the only way to go. Take care.

When a local station kept its signal off cable recently, it did tell the viewers that it was available with an antenna. That standoff lasted just over a year. Years ago, when I was a cable subscriber, the same station withheld its signal. The cable company gave out rabbit ears to subscribers so we could watch that station. I think that standoff lasted three weeks.

I'm glad you brought this up, I watch General Hospital on ABC, and Masterpiece on PBS, I've watch most of these stations. They never mention Antenna.

I live in a rural area, over 130 air-miles from the nearest city. I was going to contact my local legislator to ask that local channels be required to live-stream their programming to areas outside of OTA antenna range, with commercials (that's only fair). They sometimes run news snippets, so they have the means to stream. I'm only asking about anything a city-dweller could get with rabbit ears---nothing more. The stations could even tailor their commercials by area.

If you’re young, you don’t remember this…..but when they first started talking about cable TV, the idea was that your subscription price covered all of the advertising that you would no longer have to view if it was on cable, and then somewhere along the way they quietly stopped saying that….and sure enough, cable TV has even more commercials than over the air TV does …….so the promise was essentially BS from the very beginning.

Of course the stations won't mention antennas....it's all about the money.

Every TV owner in the country should watch this!!!

One of the things I like about antennas is that you could also filter out channels/stations from unwanted companies/owners and not have to be stuck with them like on pay tv.

The 512 mhz to 602 MHz spectrum is going to be sold for 5G The 178 MHz to 220 MHz is most likely going to be used for ISM like PTC , FEDEX , UPS data links, etc... While 54 MHz to 88 MHz is still available for TV, but, 68 to 88 MHz is being used by ISM Congress is looking to eliminate all OTA TV When I worked for a large Network in the Northeast I found that are signal along with practically every other TV and radio signal was being broadcast on an on published satellite band in the clear There were no publicly available receivers that you could buy to receive this frequency range but with a simple converter and modifying the lnb I was able to use a standard dvb receiver to get every channel in the country I showed this to the owner of the network and within days every channel was scrambled I learned a valuable lesson that day There used to be all of the major networks and most of the cable networks in the clear on c-band for South America and Europe Unfortunately the beam doesn't reach this far north One of the other amazing pieces of information I found when I worked for that Network was that in addition to all of the signals being transmitted via satellite they are also transmitted on the internet and I'm not sure exactly how they do that I learned that one morning when a contractor dug up the fiber optic lines that supplied Time Warner Every single station with the exception of the ones that were being broadcast from the computers at the head end which were all paid advertisement television everything else went off the air The internet carries every single television station They're scrambled using Motorola's encryption At the head end there is an entire underground refrigerated floor that has rack after rack of all of these decoder boxes with the cabling running overhead and a little alphanumeric display window on the front and status lights that are green and the day they dug up the cable all of the boxes went from three green lights to one green and two red and it was a very very bad day I left with a migraine so bad I couldn't see and I passed out in the front seat of my van Thank God I didn't try to drive

Our family actually had 12-channel cable in the late 1960s in Flint, Michigan, because the TV was in the basement and the house did not have a tower & outdoor antenna. When I visited people who had a tower with antenna on a rotor, I saw they had a whole lot more channels. It was Community Antenna TV then... The cable company just picked out a few channels from cities in Michigan - Flint, Detroit, Saginaw-Bay City-Midland, and a channel with nothing but clocks with time from around the world. They did not add a channel from Canada - people with antennas could get Canadian channels from Windsor and Sarnia.

Local station WDRB Louisville, KY told us multiple times to rescan channels after September 12th.

Please do regular PSA reminding your viewers about laws that ALLOW antenna usage.

As usual,you are a great resource for the 'newbie" cord cutter. I will see broadcast TV mentioned occasionally in my market,usually on a subchannel. Even then ,it is rare. The last time I heard a TV station mentioning how to use an antenna was in the digital transfer of 2009.

The closest I've seen where a TV station made the viewers aware of OTA reception was from paid Ads for "Mister Antenna," which were run on second subchannels, such as X.2 or X.3 that I viewed on OTA. I'd guess the same channels ran different ad spots when running on cable when the Mr. Antenna spot ran on OTA.

I know Dish mentions that local channels are available ota every time there's a loss of local station

Only time I heard a TV network mention a Antenna was the fallout with CBS Vs. Spectrum.

Last time I remember hearing about stations' antenna channels was in 2008-2009 before and during the full-power analog TV shutdown to digital only transition. Among the analog stations I could receive running as "nightlights" (instructions on where to find and set up a digital TV converter box), Tulsa stations KOTV 6 (CBS) February-March 2009, KJRH 2 (NBC) June-July 2009, and Oklahoma City station KOCO 5 (ABC) June-July 2009. KOCO the only station I remember mentioning their analog and digital channels. Physical channel 7, virtual channel 5. I could receive KOCO analog "nightlight" after semi-local KFSM 5 Fort Smith (CBS) analog was turned off.

I hadn’t paid attention to the fact that locals don’t mention antennas, but this makes sense as to why they do not. Most of the sub channels I watch do list channel #/channel on various cable and satellite providers/channel for OTA antenna in their on-air communications.

I have Dish Network and they allow you to connect an antenna to your satellite receiver and drop local channels to save $12/mo. You still get guide information for many of the channels and can DVR them with their receiver and don’t lose them even if Dish has a dispute and takes down a channel. I get many more channels then they would offer and they are very reliable with my attic antenna (a VHF antenna that looks like it was from the 60s combined with a UHF antenna that looks like it was from the 90s).

The FCC could require local TV stations to announce to viewers they could potentially receive their station for free occasionally throughout the day with the station id.

I remember only having a handful of OTA station's available when I was a kid Long before cable. We used a rotator to move the antenna for each station we watched on our b&w tv console. Remotes did not exist. At 11pm, most stations would end broadcast for the day. Damn, I miss those days...

Amen brother. Thanks for calling out the greedies and highlighting those who still show respect for the public.

As you covered, in the years since the 1996 Cable Act, nearly all of your "local" TV stations aren't locally owned anymore. Sad.

Also remarkable is that stations pay huge electricity bills for running their broadcast transmitters all day and night, and STILL they make more money by ignoring antenna reception. Great video. Regards.

Thanks to you and your recommendations, Tyler, I have been enjoying clear local stations on an indoor antenna for several years now! Keep doing what you're doing!

Thanks for your great content, Antenna Man! I have a good setup with my Televes DatBoss Mix up at 30 feet (near Worcester, MA), but I still listen every time you post a new video. You're a great resource for us antenna users. Thanks again.

I enjoyed watching this video. It was very informative. When I was younger, I used to frequently watch another unknown network called Live Well Network (now called Localish). No one I knew personally had heard about the network, including those who had OTA HDTV. I wonder if it was for similar reasons local stations don't mention Antenna TV.

Great information Tyler, thank you much for doing this.

When Comcast started to charge 18.75 for the broadcast tv fee on top of the $22 for limited basic cable that pushed me to finally get the outdoor antenna I needed to receive all my local stations. I have to say that some of my locals do make announcements about rescanning. WHTM recently about rescans for the increased power of the hivhf signal. WGAL also on sub channels like MeTV so viewers can find new channels they added. They do not have anything on their website about the frequency or antenna types you might need or make any type of announcements about it One thing you could do is contact the stations broadcast engineers. I’ve found sometimes they are willing to answer email questions.

Awesome sir, thank you for bringing this indo to our attention. And to another note: I'll be getting you that info soon on my pre-amp. It's getting someone to hold the ladder so I can get up to the second story under the eve where the pre-amp is located. I should have that info soon. Thanks again for everything you've been doing to help me get a more reliable and stronger signal.

I should also say that your channel is looking better and better. Very professional looking. Keep up that good work.

I can’t wait to see a future video on explaining the wrongs with the laws passed by Congress affecting OTA TV.

This is so timely for me. Thank you. I cut my cord and was hoping for good info.

This is a really, really informative video and if you're not angry there might be something wrong. I always wondered why they didn't really push the fact that you could get this channel free over the air now it all makes sense.

Great information! Thank You, I was not aware of this topic

I was not aware of this information. Thank you so much.

Thanks again. I've been using an antenna for over ten years!

Thank you for your videos. You help educate us all.

In Canada cable and satellite companies own most major TV networks, and thus control over the air TV. They have moved to shut down most transmitters outside of major cities, forcing viewers onto cable and paid satellite that they own. OTA Television has not been embraced in Canada the way it has in the US.

Good job explaining this to viewers. I think the real problem is the DVR set up that the cable and satellite providers have. If cable channels (commercial) could rebroadcast on local antenna stations the whole situation would change.

Thank you for all the good information

Same thing here in Canada. I've been wondering why it's like some kind of well kept secret finding out what stations are transmitting and on what channels where are the rebroadcast channels . I went to all their websites looking for this info and you can't find it. This explains a lot. Reminds me how if you want satellite TV in Canada you were railroaded into purchasing the basic package that had all the CBC, CTV, Global, ect.

I appreciate your videos!

Excellent video as usual. We have a Airtv2/Sling tv setup here at home and it all works great and its nice getting my locals for free. Recently Dish/Sling tv dropped Game Show Network over Sony wanting to significantly raise the rates for that channel. As much as we liked and watched GSN i'm glad Dish/Sling told Sony to go pound sand instead of giving in and raising our monthly bill.

In a sense the retransmission fees have helped fuel the cord cutting. The higher the fees, the higher cable and satellite ended up charging people. I am in a decent location that has most of the channel I want to see OTA. Since I am clise to the border I also get Mexican channels.

if you take requests on topics, you should talk about shows with a long broadcast history moving exclusively to streaming, like "days of our lives" moving to peacock and "dancing with the stars" moving to disney+, and what it could mean for antenna viewers. i think both should be taken as a terrible sign for the future of broadcast TV.

Thanks very much for the insight man...👍

Thx for this info!

Very informative. Thankyou

I hope everyone realizes that as we go nearly everything is going to be pay, including what comes over the air. They will still probably leave some content fully free, but it will not likely be what you really want. It is obvious to me that they are doing the usual, which is get you used to and hooked. And then here comes charging for it all.

Time to put cable out to pasture and move everything to OTA.

I have cut I few cords in my day, subscribed

In a good part of Vermont OTA reception is impossible due to terrain

Thanks for so valuable information. 👍

Antenna Man, thank you for letting people know about free over the air reception. I have already saved thousands using this method of getting free local channels. I took great pleasure "cutting the cord" and plann to continue getting free reception until the cable co.'s nose bleeds...

Anyone else think the whole "retransmission consent" crap should be abolished?

I'm not sure why I love this channel so much. I have had OTA or even cable TV in over 15 years lol

great video antenna man makes sence

Great Episode!

I remember seeing the local PBS station saying the over the air numbers yesterday.

Thanks. I honestly had no idea about this.

The only time I see broadcast tv acknowledge antennas is when there's a new 13.5 or some substation and I'll see a few "rescan your channel listing" commercials or pop-ups. Great channel!

You are right...ever since we cut the cord and went OTA I have never found any information about antenna service on any local TVs web site. But of note, they must know we are watching since CBS 13 (myrtle beach) added a special repeater channel (13-13) for those that live south of Myrtle Beach. Their main OTA channel 13.1 comes from Florence SC and is hard to pick up if you live south of Myrtle Beach. The newly added channel, 13-13, takes care of it! But I did not find out about it from CBS 13's web site, I found it by accident reading peoples comments on some web site.

Hear, hear! Absolutely right!

Well I purchased the BIG Televes antenna... NICE !!!! 60 channels Thank I enjoy your posts

Great content love anologue TV and shortwave radio DX

my PBS station does sometimes mention antenna viewers, but that makes sense because PBS is public broadcasting.

hello Thank you for an informative video

Excellent. You are a genius.

Some are Very quiet and some , such as our CBS affiliate, mention the over the air channel every morning on their newscast. I'm also learning many of my neighbors have cut the cord with antennas pkaced in their attic. Cable subscriptions for TV is on a serious decline in cities with decent signals. We are in a transition period. But I agree with your assessment.

I have an antenna. There's nothing I've wanted to watch on broadcast TV except CBS' 48 Hours for years now [and even now rarely... can we say.. gone downhill?]. Whenever the threat of "losing one" of these locals came up, BFD. Do it. No loss in this house. The legacy channels can get bent. Just Sling and an antenna now, an AirTV device if I want to record Svengoolie or something on the "Movies!" channel or an oddball OTA channel. And if the price goes up on Sling, bye! Roku. You Tube. Tubi, Film Rise British, Horror, etc. Vudu, Freevee plenty of other out there. An entire multiple lifetime's worth.

Capitol's stations here in the Raleigh/Durham area, WRAL and WRAZ, provide fantastic signals even in the fringes. I watch both pretty often and travel across the area often so it helps a lot.

I watch my Monday night and Sunday football games in HD for free with my antenna in the attic, it's hooked up via coax cable to my smart TV and I can view the channels in a nice menu just like any other "channel guide". It's amazing.

You are so right. I have had to contact engineering people at two of my local stations to ask them why there are so many "technical" problems with their OTA signals or if they were even aware of the problems. In one case, the picture was about half the size it should have been. I've never seen that problem before. In another case, the METV affiliate would go off the air for 30-45 seconds...totally blackscreen...about twice an hour. Trying to find someone to contact was almost impossible. I attempted to call the CBS affiliate's switchboard but it was not attended. A recording asked me to hit "zero" to speak to someone. When I hit "zero", another recording said that option wasn't available. I resorted to contacting the "public file" contact by email found on their website. By law, they are required (or at least were) to keep records of emails as part of their public file so I thought this would be a good way to get their attention. After experiencing weeks of technical issues with the local OTA METV affiliate....it suddenly became watchable again. I wonder if they were even paying any attention to it to begin with. I can't believe what has happened to local media.

I've seen it mentioned on the odd channels 🤔 The major channels 😳... no Thank you so much for sharing 😀 👏🏾

It was your channel that got me to get a good antenna, great powered splitter, and even an alright pre amp. To get free local channels. With the plethora of knowledge you shared I pulled in 62 channels (55 I saved to watch omitting HSN, church, Spanish channels). It’s funny Austin TX fox7 only hints to OTA by advertising the sub channels. During the NBC greed tantrum with DishNetwork. Dish gave me free an OTA receiver to put OTA through the tuner which allows me to DVR OTA. Being about 50 miles from Austin I had to move the antenna outside you did a video on it and I went from 10 to 25 with the other upgrades brought to 62. I’m thinking on upgrading Clearstream 2Max but 7 is VHF hi and NBC6 is VHF lo ( which is in another market and yet to be picked up by me ) so my options are limited.

Thank you 👍

Hey antenna man I love your content it's always very informative and detailed. I was just curious what the turn around time is on your paid recommendations for an antenna setup.

Thank you Tyler's for this very valuable information! 😊👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 I'm not real surprised but it my blood boil

I work for a TV station that operates three stations. When we are about to be dropped from cable/satellite our announcements DO include the information that our signals can always be viewed with an antenna. The average viewer doesn't understand the actual RF channel concept. In this city that would further confuse viewers as our .2 and .3 channels, and one .1 channel, are actually broadcast on the other competing stations' transmitters. On two of our transmitters, we are broadcasting the ATSC 3.0 main channels of all the other competing stations in town. BTW, at home I watch TV with an antenna (when I DO watch TV).

"Consumer Protection" indeed. And good on WFMZ. They are a local channel for me!

A few weeks a go I called my local TV station to ask why they were off the air. The station representative told me that they were painting the tower and would be off the for antenna users...NOT cable or satellite users. We talked a bit. During our talk I was called a "free loader" because I was getting their signal for free while cable and satellite users pay. He said the future doesn't look good for us antenna users. He explained that it takes a lot of money to keep this station on the air and antenna users don't pay a dime towards their upkeep like cable or satellite users do. I asked him about possible scrambling of their signal and he said that is one possibility. He couldn't, or wouldn't answer my questions about the upcoming ATSC 3.0. He said that's up to the FCC.

my favorite antenna came with an ATI all-in-wonder card ages ago. i don't know what it's made of, but it kind of resembles a 2D pine tree with a coax connector at the base. I still use it for the converter box on the 2003 sanyo flat-screen crt. On our 4K set we're using a thrift store find . it has a loop, bunny ears and a knob which might not even do anything. I probably need to look through your vids for a refresher on things I just took for granted growing up.

I'm about 4 times older than you. TV stations used to advertise how powerful they were, seemingly to entice people to watch their station, getting a better picture, better sound, and no disconnection.

@ the start, Simple, Broadcasters get paid by Cable companies, as well as advertisers. They don't get paid by uses of OTA antennas. users When I cut my Cable, I got over 30 Analog channels, when they changed to Digital I got only 3 strong signals. Many channels (20) came in for about 15 minutes then pixilated and/or froze. Some sounded like they were transmitting audio from underwater. I tried 4 flatpanel digital antennas, and the one I amusing now is the one you hate. Mounted on a pole on my desk. I am 18 miles from a major Broadcast tower Line of sight, I can see the aircraft warning lights, barely get it. 3 Miles behind me is another Broadcast antenna (170 degrees) on a mountain I might be able to see if a house was not in the way. In the Analog days I got NYC (195 miles) 2, 5, and 9. Long Island channel 22. In analog pretty much everey OTA channel in my area.

I remember when Cablevision (now Altice) and my local WABC7 New York station had a contract dispute before, they were QUICK to mention that affected customers will be able to use an A/B Switch to jump between the cable reception and the antennae reception.

Where I live, in Huntsville, AL, the local affiliates, even though owned by those big companies, do mention over the air antenna connections, especially on their webpages. CBS WHNT 19 (owned by Nexstar) has a form on their site to fill out if you have signal issues. ABC WAAY TV 31 (owned by Allen Media Broadcasting) has instructions on how to rescan your antenna to pick up the additional channels they broadcast that cable/satellite is not retransmitting. NBC WAFF 48 (owned by Gray Media) has instructions in a news story done about where their signal was recently improved walking people through rescanning their antenna. So, I believe that I am fortunate to have local stations that are providing that information, because I know from friends and family in three other markets that their affiliates are not providing this level of information.

I have a TV Antenna and use Tablo with it. Together the two rock. I use Tablo to record shows I like and watch them when I feel like it. While I don't get the extra channels, like Discovery, Disney, and others like that, I really don't miss them.

Dude I love that t-shirt you're wearing. Where did you get it?

The stations in New Mexico have been refreshingly honest about antenna TV. One showing the channels they lease out and their program schedule on their website

I got me a couple nice upscale antennas! I love em!!! I get all my local games and nascar F1 and other racing as well as local and national news weather etc etc

Our WCJB TV20 here in Ocala /Gainesville Florida does. They periodically plug their sub frequencies on their main station. Example: Tune into 20.3 for METV at the end of the commercial for the programming by saying the frequency/channel sub number and calling it "Over The Air 20.3". I seldom hear on other locals. FOX 51 will sometimes plug their sub chans, the others are few and far. We get about 48 channels over air here.All from an attic mount. Of course most are sub channels and some are duplicates of affiliates etc. We HAVE NEVER HAD CABLE OR SAT. TV is suppose to be FREE. They figured out a way to scam people by paying for TV when commercials are suppose to fund the programming. Thank you Tyler for keeping the word out there that TV is free, STILL.

Yes, the $12B number bothers me. Thank you for opening our eyes to this volume and style of business.

Had an internet outage last week and was glad I had my OATs in use - especially important if it were a more major issue (hurricane, tornado, bombing, etc...) Failsafe implementations should be remembered by lawmakers.