No, Seriously...Local TV Stations Might Go Away!

Folks, you need to take note of what is going on with the Government with regards to how we bring you not only the news but also CBS and NBC programming. In the future, local broadcast TV stations might be FORCED to stop broadcasting in HD...or worse, even off the air all together.

Here's how it works right now. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has issued us a license to broadcast to you on UHF Channel 24 (KTAB-DT 32.1) and UHF channel 29 (KRBC-DT 9.1). Every TV station in the country is assigned a channel to broadcast on. That signal can be picked up by an antenna and watched on your HDTV (or older TV with a converter box) for free. That signal reaches a certain radius from around our transmitter tower. Cable and satellite companies also pick it up and send it to you.

The FCC wants to get rid of some channels in the spectrum (see the links below for an explanation of what the spectrum is). That means there are less available channels for TV stations to broadcast on. If channels are eliminated from the spectrum, some stations will be forced to change the channel they broadcast on. That means you will have to re-scan your TV or box to get those stations. If the FCC eliminates enough channels from the spectrum, some stations will be forced to share a channel. Right now, our competition does this. Notice the other channels on their frequency are not in HD? That's because there isn't enough bandwidth (again, see the links below for an explanation on what the spectrum is) to broadcast two HD signals on the same channel. To do it, the quality must suffer. And that's what could happen to all broadcast stations..they could get consolidated into sharing a channel. This means you could lose your over-the-air free HDTV signal. What you would be watching would most likely be a wide screen standard definition signal. By the way, I mentioned earlier that most cable companies and both satellite providers use our off air signal to get our stations to you. If consolidation happens, you could also lose HD reception until those providers find an alternate way to get it to you. The methods of doing that are fiber optic or microwave direct feeds from our studio..and that's very expensive and would most likely raise your bill.

The FCC wants to take our channels and sell them to other companies, mostly cell phone and Internet providers. Don't be fooled. It's already happened a couple of times. At one time, there were 83 available channels for TV stations to broadcast on. That was reduced to 69 (in the 90s I believe). When the DTV transition happened in 2009, channels 2-6 and 52-68 were eliminated. Things like wireless Internet routers, cell phones, blue tooth and many other technologies now occupy that space in the spectrum.

This summer the FCC proposed a "voluntary" system where broadcasters give their channel up and get compensated for it. Stations who chose to do this would be re-assigned another channel or share with another station. Our industry, with your help, fought to make this remain a voluntary thing. We succeeded. But it's far from over. We need you to help us keep our ability to bring you over-the-air free TV. See the following links for more information. There's lots there. Take some time and explore these sites.

http://www.thefutureoftv.org/

http://www.nab.org/television/thefutureoftv.asp