Will Free OTA Antenna TV Be Shut Down in the Future? 

While you say "FCC decided to sell TV spectrum channels" and FCC was clearly involved, each of these 3 sales were specifically authorized by Congress.

I worked at a TV station in 2006. TV died when they shut down analog signals. The move was totally premature and pushed by fcc and selling agendas. While it created a clearer picture on flatscreens, the over the air reception is horrible. With analog I could at least watch a snowy picture. With HD you either get it or you don't get it. Used to rely on TV for weather watches and warnings. Signals from HD at least around here get totally wiped out when there is lightning anywhere within 100 miles of me. I remember when working in the TV broadcast biz was decent. Now there is no career in this biz or radio unless your the engineer.

As an old man in the TV field, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. Good job Tyler. My first work next to washing dishes in the late 60’s early 70’s was installing TV antennas using 300 ohm twin lead and fixing tube TVs. Boy has technology changed!!! From tube to silicon WOW!!! But greed is the biggest problem we have today!!! No matter where or what, it is greed!!! And until that is solved, I do not know…. DE N2JYG

Here in Europe, TV signals are normally not transmitted by the broadcaster themselves. There is a separate operating company (usually originating in the state telecom of the past) that operates the transmitter network, and then many broadcasters deliver their signal via that network. This way only a couple of channels (like 4 or 5) per region have to be used and all programmes, public and commercial, are transmitted over those. Of course the spectrum sell-off and dying of terrestrial TV transmission is happening here too. Most viewers are on cable or IP (internet) TV.

When the switch from analog to digital took place years ago, I was living in a very populated area. My county had more people than some states. Yet the reception fell off sharply for some of the local channels. Plus, one of the channels went off air for several weeks. I complained to the station. They responded that they had permission to shut down their station briefly to upgrade it for some TV-on-cell-phone service called Dyle TV, but then bad weather extended the outage. Ever use Dyle TV? Me neither. It was a startup which soon failed. FCC does not care about consumers.

I cut cable and went to a $25 roof antenna about 6 years ago. I rarely watch TV anymore because there is very little worth watching. Good Luck, Rick

Thanks Tyler!You sure did answer a whole lot of questions for us cutters. And you did it in such a informative way explaining the history of these bandwidth selloffs and all. We are lucky to have you out there and you are appreciated!!! Please keep up your great work. Thank you. Darrell

I remember sports teams used to have their local TV broadcasts on local channels available for free. Then in the 1990s some of the broadcasts were moved to Regional Sports Networks. Now all of the local broadcasts are on Regional Sports Networks. Now it is easier to follow your local teams on radio. A lot of sports programming has been moved to paid cable networks, Regional Sports Networks, & paid streaming services.

Greed usually wins out. If there's enough money thrown out there the FCC will probably cave.

You hit the nail on the head that as programming is moved to pay channels the stations will lose even local advertisers as less people will tune in.

What I can see happening coincident with the deployment of ATSC 3.0 is telling companies that own two full-power stations in one market to consolidate their program streams onto one signal and relinquish the other.

It can’t go away. What about the Emergency Broadcast System? Will I need to pay to be notified of an emergency?

Great video Tyler..! Thanks for keeping us all informed!!!!!

Awesome video! My favorite type, densely packed with valuable info and opinion, and little to no fluff. You are the man!

I'm not paying for broadcast TV. The interference I have now makes it expensive and hard to pick up.

This would hurt a lot of people who depend on OTA.

As a cord cutter for years and years now, I find myself using the antenna less & less. This is due to bad signals and bad picture quality. In the Atlanta area WSB and ABC have always been the absolute strongest signal you can get in the Atl. now just three miles from the Atlanta airport I cannot even receive a watchable signal from them. It's become very clear that these corporations don't want you to have free TV anymore and they will do the bare minimum they have to do to satisfy our laws. They refuse to understand they are cutting their own throat; I have not watched anything on ABC for years now, so they are gone and non-existent as far as I'm concerned. Unless corporations decide to change their tune and up their power and picture quality to 4k, then over-the-air transmissions will become a thing of the past and so will these corporations. These Network Corporations think they have something to offer for money, they do not! There is nothing there I would ever pay for and I believe they would put them self out of business thinking that they do. I am a RU-vid Premium user and I find myself casting videos to my television about 90% of the time now so, I watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it, in very high quality so my condolences to ABC NBC CBS and others, I bid you a farewell as you are playing Russian roulette and you will eventually shoot yourself, so bye!

Thanks for all the info You provide! It really helped in understanding what to buy and how to set it up! Awesome stuff

I cut the cable yesterday

I've rejected all kinds of digital TV, except satellite FTA ( free to air ). The FCC can damage the bandwidth, but not the service. I already rejected it.

There were two instances that I know of where broadcast networks attempted to encrypt their shows: NBC did it once with "Heroes" during the second season and I forget the Fox show they tried it with, but I think it was either an episode of "24" or "Fringe." They both claimed it was "accidental." They didn't do it again because enough people noticed it and made a stink about it.

Have an awesome day Tyler and everyone else too!

Thanks for the channel! Wish you great success!

Great video I like it. Your videos are very informative.

i would like to see all stations required to broadcast at full power. get rid of the limited quality, short distance, low power tv stations. they are a waste of spectrum.🙄🤔

If I were FCC chairman, I would vote to return some UHF spectrum to the air that continues to be unused by many phone companies, and make public broadband mandatory in urban and rural areas...

One thing I like about your channel is you clear up myths that some people have about digital antennae.

I miss the days of accessible quality local OTA tv. The Bay Area just lost their last fully independent channel (KOFY) to Grit, which hurt.. but nobody noticed it. I hate these soulless substations. The functional loss of PBS is infuriating, especially for the kid's programming. I'm glad my babysitter was sesame street and arthur instead of an ipad.. the FCC really is selling us out. They're forcing us to have cell phones and the internet, those should be *options*. It's clear who they're working for, and it isn't us.

One example of a TV show being moved to streaming is the show Blood and Treasure. It wasn't a great show but it use to air on broadcast TV and it's next season will air streaming. Most new shows are being produced for streaming rather than broadcast, and being produced at half or even a quarter the season length.

Good video. Free OTA TV will not go away but "valued content" will continue to be moved behind a paywall, ie. Peacock, Paramount+, etc.

Thank you for your content Radio Shack

Totally agree. I think also with streaming services like Pluto, XUMO, Plex, etc, this will drive more interest and more support on leaving OTA free. As you said, if OTA goes behind a paywall then the station's ratings will drop.

The Emergency Broadcast System MUST include ALL FREE OTA TV broadcasts as these broadcasts are meant to cover every part of the country in the event that a natural emergency should occur in any region! Not everyone has access to cable, Internet, or satellite broadcasts!

Spot-on with the streaming services. Even basic cable has gotten eviscerated of anything meaningful, from sports to anything that gains a popular following, to the point where I was paying a cable bill for what I could receive for free over the air with an antenna (mostly news channels). As a result I dropped my cable service after it became too expensive for the content it was delivering and went with an antenna in my attic. Now I just need to get hooked up with a streaming service (or two) to augment my antenna set-up and I'll be good at a lot lower price point.

You do a good service for people. A lot of people still don’t even know there is over the air TV and is it’s free. I used to work for a few broadcasters in my time as the transmitter engineer, and even turned on for the first time 3 brand new stations. My picture is me swapping out a 55Kw klystron back in the 90’s. I loved working in the industry which was most of my life but its certainly no longer what it used to be, would never go back into it, and I think its days are numbered. I got out after the DTV transition because broadcasters started to penny pinch and pushed their engineers like me to oversee several of their stations. Turned into lots of stress and was no longer fun. The writing was on the wall and when I had an offer (which was actually 15% LESS than I was making) I took the job. But I do miss working on high power RF. You forgot to add that cell companies also took 60% of TV C-band spectrum from 3.7 to 3.98 GHz for 5G cell sites causing a lot of chaos for TV reception used by broadcasters and cable companies. All dishes needed to be modified or sometimes replaced. Also affected aircraft navigation.

hello people. Thank you for this video

My Fellow Americans And True American Patriot Value's 🇺🇸 USA in my Time Channel Master made the Best Antennas And GOD 🙏 Bless America 🇺🇸 USA

"You will own nothing and you will like it." I've seriously have used this quote on a number of topics that don't seem related.

I requested your service and recommendations over a year ago . I did what you told me and my reception via an antenna you recommended did a great job . Recently I am seeing pixelation on even the strongest channels on OTA . They many very well be reducing their over the air signal subtlety and over time people will be get fed up and switch to something else . I’m going to try the box you recommend to see if this helps capture these weak pixelated signals . The recording features they also offer is a plus .

Thanks!

OTA TV was totally screwed by the shutdown of analog broadcasts. Due to circumstances of life, I gave up watching regular TV in 2014 and I don't miss it at all, but still I would consider the complete loss of OTA TV to be a serious matter.

Can you comment on what Me TV did in Washington DC by reducing the transmission power and offering a paid stream instead?

FCC needs to make the locals get with the 21st century and make them provide a free feed on the internet like Locast did.

Excellent content. Great efforts. FTA is a basic human right, mustbe argued. FTA with quality content forever. A good fight.

I don't think that will happen.Maybe some of the low powered TV stations will go away because the cell phone companies will buy those low powered stations

Does the weather play a factor in radio stations 2? One summer I got a Buffalo, NY radio station yet i like in Ontario 2 hrs North of Toronto. That b like 4-6 hrs from Buffalo

I think FCC should prob look at some other international standards and consider implementing those. ISDB-TV seems to be a good standard that leaves a 13th segment that can be used as both a guardband and used for transmission of data. In Japan emergency alert data is sent quickly on that 13th segment (the technology is known as 1seg). Meanwhile the emergency alert system that US is using can't transmit messages fast enough to work in certain circumstances like earthquakes. FCC should prob consider adopting this technology in the future, as TVs, radios, mobile phones, and PA systems can benefit from these emergency transmissions.

Ever since the digital transition, free ota has become a constricted, less reliable entity. The network and independent stations in my dma (Seattle), moved from vhf channels broadcasting over 4megawatts, to uhf at less than 30kilowatts. Yes, the digital signal was more 'robust' but whereas in my location a 'suburban' antenna from the 1950s was more than sufficient to recieve stations 70 miles distant (Seattle being 40 and Tacoma and Bellingham being 70) I had to install a deep fringe uhf type to pull those stations on their new uhf frequencies. One major network channel further away, fox, was particularly hard to get as the tower was in Bremerton, some 30 degrees off from Seattle. They eventually moved back to 13/vhf but I had moved by that point way out of range of ota. There is no reason why most of these stations are ota. Reception by 2015 had become very problematic and the revenue from the cablecos had tilted the landscape. There is no doubt that they will either pull ota or with atsc3.0 erect a paywall. Just drive down any suburban street and count the number of rooftop antennas; even in the city; many stations both network and independent require way better than indoor setups unless the folks don't want those channels. And add to that the neighborhoods with 'no antennas' policy built into the property deeds, away from government review. It's going to eventually happen, the only question is when; as soon as a major cities station does it, the race will be off.

HOWdy A-M, Thanks COOP ...

Thanks😄

The first sort of subscription service AFAIK, was tried here in CT. There was a TV station in Hartford, Channel 18, WHCT-TV. Beginning in 1962, 18 ran a subscription television service from 7:00 p.m. to midnight, with first-run movies and sports events from Madison Square Garden. A decade before the launch of HBO, WHCT's programming was an experiment between RKO and Zenith, who provided the "Phonevision" descrambler boxes. WHCT could be seen by all viewers with a UHF tuner and antenna during regular broadcast hours, but viewers needed a decoder box in order to view the signal during the subscription television block. Needless to say, this was a failure and RKO, which owned WHCT at the time, ended the programming. The station's manager at the time...Charles Osgood...THAT Charles Osgood. Before that 18 was the CBS station in Hartford. But by 1958, CBS had concluded it was better to have programming on a VHF station, even if it was only an affiliate. It moved its Hartford affiliation to WTIC-TV, and sold WHCT to a group led by Edward Taddei, which turned it into an independent station. Channel 3, now WFSB, has been Hartford's CBS affiliate ever since. Many owners and financial struggles, and cable penetration of stations like the NY Indies and TV38 in Boston, not to mention two powerful CT indies in channels 20 and 61, seemed to spell the end of WHCT. In the 90's, Univision came in and turned it into WUVN. In the 80's of course there were things like OnTV and here in NYC WHT (seen on channel 67 WSNL and 68 WWHT)

Whether they like it or not, OTA broadcasters have to compete with illegal downloads. So forcing people to pay for OTA wouldn't work. It's the free aspect that allows people to watch TV legally but they will turn to illegal options if they have to. What does hurt OTA are the cell phone companies that are eating up all the bandwidth.

I just hate how there's hardly any locally-produced programming or commercials anymore. In the old days, you could watch some guy in a clown costume singing songs with local schoolchildren, or see TV game shows from your local Elk's Lodge, or watch people polka-dancing at the dance hall right down the street! Now there's literally nothing like that at all. We have no idea what's happening right in our own communities!

Quick question, I live in the new york market and noticed wnbc signal was gone since at least last night. I can't find any information on why this would be. I scanned a few different times thinking maybe there was some repack but it came up with nothing new.

I think the only repack we would see in the near future may involve ch.6 and maybe ch.5 for FM radio. Which I would support a repack on those 2 channels to expand FM radio in hopes to get some full power stations back.

Free Antenna TV will always be a thing and should not go away anytime soon. With streaming services on the rise and cable's downfall Antenna will be the future.

The old reruns are the only thing worth watching anyway.

i have been watching stranger things a lot lately so from the distance you looked like eleven in the thumbnail for just a second lmao

One thing to bear in mind is there is plenty of spectrum available in the mmWave bands, which has only recently started being used. However it will require a lot more sites to cover an area, compared to lower frequencies. There are also some microwave bands, such as the "C band" around 3.5 - 4 GHz which has a lot of bandwidth available.

Interesting opinion about VHF - sounds right.

Hey in my area (the Flint Saginaw Bay City market, Michigan) there are two channels that have been give me problems pulling in that normally I'm able to get wjrt channel 12 and WEYI channel 25. Does anybody know what might be going on?

THE FUTURE......and interesting subject, for sure. There has been such reverberations. The money will probably be the determining factor. So much has shifted to other broadcast formats, but local and free has an ally, advertising. Over the Air, at least in my area, has increased content, a lot. Thanks for your efforts.

Wand bands do air traffic control use? Won't all these phone bands compete with plane frequencies?

Any thoughts on some of the paid with ad streaming providers might move some of their streaming to OTA broadcasting? So we'd end up with CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, FOX, HULU, Netflix, etc. Advertisers still pay for air space to run their ads so they will still be getting revenue.

I remember Wometco Home Theater (WHT) in New York City area & Prism in Philadelphia area on UHF & was awful as they used a sperate box for sound & could not record it on a VCR as only picture comes out & sound all garbled as they used side band for sound. But they sold of descrambler boxes for them & worked on any over the air pay services as they used same scramble method. Any outdoor UHF antenna worked as they were low power. -Cheers!

It wouldn't matter where I am. I think we only get one channel maybe two at the most. It sucks for larger markets though.

Will Antenna man do speaking engagements ! I love watching this guy , reminds me of Gerry Todd!!

Good video Tyler. Comment 1: I do not expect the FCC to do another repack. The frequencies below 600 MHZ are starting to have a longer wavelength, which causes the need for a longer antenna. The cellphone auctions you are seeing now are for much higher frequencies. Comment 2: Here is what I think Greedy TV will do. The .1 channel with still be in Standard HD, but if you want 4K, you will have to pay a fee to decrypt it. With ATSC 3.0 integration with the internet, that would not be very difficult to do. Consolation prize -- your viewership counts for advertising will be the same.

I took your advice when I needed to get a new Computer and bought a Lenovo and am very happy with it, They design there computers with Linux in mind along with windows! Dell is one of the few company that do have computers with designs with Linux in mind as well.

I'm shocked that the U.S. hasn't adopted a license scheme for OTA TV like Great Britain & Japan does. If that should happen, there's going to be a "gold rush" to free Internet streaming services like Pluto TV, Tubi or even Xumo. 🖥️

Question: What are your thoughts about the Xtreme Signal HDB2X?

I gotta disagree about streaming at least as the state as it's in right now. When there was just a few (mostly Netflix & Hulu) it was very promising because they were cheap just to have those two. Unfortunately Hollywood studios all wanted to have a bigger piece of their IP pie, and now we have way too many which now to have it all can cost even more than cable TV itself. To make matters worse they're producing quantity over quality, and censoring/banning popular shows cause some fringe nobodies on Twitter made a complaint over something or other. So a lot are either going back or going to OTA with just one or two main services. For me I use OTA for weather reports, and METV other than that I use Pluto TV, Tubi, and other "free" sites.... that'll will remain a secret. :D I've have not had Cable TV since 2006, and I've never went to a paid streaming service (I've only used Hulu when they had the free version.)

The last Dell product I bought made me question that.

Dell is proprietary crap,I put nothing past Dell when it comes to profit. Great video,Tyler.I only hope if a repack forces more VHF broadcasting,that signal strength is increased.

I have been asking this question for years

The ad model is the best model, even for RU-vid!

There is way more to this story than you let on, but I don't blame you. Yes, the spectrum auction was a big part of all the transitions but there were several OTHER forces involved which you didn't mention, but then you would have known all those details if you weren't alive in the 60s and 70s. But in the end, we are all living in the same reality, you can't change history, though some have tried. This is actually a fairly deep topic worthy of a Frontline episode or a whole 60 Minutes show (see what I did there?) but they wouldn't dare(?). Like so many other engineers, some of us have worked in this industry for a long time, in my case nearly 3 decades. I applaud all your efforts and hope you can keep up the good work, it's rare to find people who even know what broadcast television is anymore or that it is still currently available.

Video was helpful, I hope Free OTA will be free

Good to know.

I bought a dtv antenna it gets 5 channels what can I do don't have cable or wifi help

As someone who grew up with OTA television for decades. It won’t happen! This is terrible and hopefully we stop the FCC from selling more free TV stations to wireless companies! Even PBS is trying to encourage their viewers to subscribe to PBS passport, because they make more money from annual memberships and low VHF transmission costs!

A year later Channel Master notifies me their HD Modulator is in stock. I see there are other brand options now for cheaper price. Now with 3.0 around the corner, why not wait. Idea for follow up video?

Wow. You do your reasearch.......

I live in a valley in a major metropolitan area in California and can only get 1 OTA channel; and only if I sit at a certain spot on the couch. I’ve since moved on to streaming on the internet.

I actually remember a couple of subscription TV channels at the high end of the UHF spectrum back in the early 80s; One was an adult station and the other was an HBO style movie station

It has already been shut down in my country new Zealand you can not get tv with just antenna Ariel now although We still have tv but now require a box to plugin to the Tv to get channels and they can be somewhat costly for a decent one. It's all been upgraded to a digital signal and not the old UHF/vhf signals If your wondering what the box for the tv is called its named " Freeview box"

Me and my son can still not get Channel 9 White Cloud Michigan we only get it once in a great while I bought the large antenna I got it good for a couple of years you said the teller was down only doing 25% if I still be doing that because we can't get it so we don't get me TV faster does suck when you're unlimited income but thank you for always helping

Yes! In the near future,!

I can see the devaluation of free channels, as when NBC tried to make their network a cable-only station (they do own Commiecast, after all), the old NBC stations were forced to get reaffiliated with another network, or like WHDH 7 in Boston, become independent. Most of us call that station "The Family Feud Channel", because it's literally 90% news broadcasts, and the awful Steve Harvey Feud.

I have a 20 dollar cell phone that sucks up every signal out there I know its not the same thing but is there something out there an indoor antenna that works I know there are out there right and left but one that works .

I have always been curious how many still watch ota channels. I have antennas only since they have been sent to me to review but I never watch live tv. I stream or download everything when I actually watch tv.

Reminds me of a Star Trek episode (TOS) where Spock identifies an old Earth transmission as "video" (TV) and states it did not last past a date I can't remember.

Same for me, Never again cable. Actually, I don't watch OTA TV much any more. Rather, I look at streaming mostly. I only have a smaller HDTV now and gave away 2 43 inch fairly recent vintage HDTV. Thanks 😊.

fighting the good fight 👍

If they do, I'll just watch my DVD'S and BluRay disks. I'm not paying to watch commercials. I "recut" the cord in 2012. (Had antenna all of my life until 1990, then had cable, then Satellite tv) Satellite TV was becoming too expensive. And yes, the commercials.

Maybe it's time for SFN (Single Frequency Networks), now possible with ATSC 3.0, as it finally uses OFDM, just like DVB-T (and T2) and ISDB-T. That way, less physical channels are needed.

Anyone remember Prism TV? My brothers love sports so my mother paid the subscription for the service. I remember in 1987 we had to get some weird microwave antenna to pick up the signal after Channel 57 was sold and converted to a regular station

Is OTA channels (ATSC 2.0) still available? (April 2023). I just tried 2 different tv antennas, previously working and 2 different tuners. One from my tv and another one i just bought from homeworx and i CAN NOT pickup a single OTA channel? Tuners are set to Air not cable. I bought Homeworx tuner since i thought my tv tuner went bad. Can't have 2 tuners and 2 different antennas go bad? What gives?

How long until VHF becomes the aggregate substrate for all OTA? Broadcast freq ranged could be staggered across territory to minimize overlap. Just point your VHF antenna at the nearest strongest cluster. Some territority content drift would happen, reflective of local markets as they now.

The worst part of this Digital is the littlest bit of wind and the signal goes. Analog was never an issue.