Here’s the situation. I still watch local over-the-air TV because at this point, I’m not willing to shell out for cable or dish or Netflix or Hulu. Or perhaps I should say up to this point.
A few days ago, I lost the local Fox affiliate and its Me-TV and Movies! subchannels. No big deal, I thought. I’ve lost reception for a couple of days before and eventually gotten it back. I’ve still got 3 channels each for the local CBS, ABC, and PBS stations. (As I’ve mentioned before, I live right in the middle of a massive NBC coverage hole.)
But the other day I’m watching the news and guess what I see? The notice that the Fox station has been purchased… by the owner of the CBS station! Apparently this won’t switch any affiliations or anything. But this does mean that the Fox station gets downgraded to a low-power station, since the same owners can’t have more than one normal-power station in the same market. Guhhh.
The station owners have promised that they’ll be working hard to get up and running in the next 90 days, but from what I can tell, it may involve setting up a whole crapload of low-power transmitters in “strategic locations”. As I live in a notoriously bad reception area quite a distance from the city in question, I’m basically giving up hope of ever seeing these stations on normal TV again.
The part that really burns me, though, is that more than likely I’ll lose NFC football. That is, Packers football. Right in the middle of Packers country. I guess I could always go to a bar or to my parents’ (they’re lucky enough to leave in a clear enough area close enough to pull (most of) the Green Bay channels), but it’s not like I can always do that anytime I want to watch something on those channels.
I could probably shell out for dish or cable (I really couldn’t afford it until fairly recently). Or I could start streaming Netflix or Hulu (I’ve never tried either). But as the man says, it’s not the money - it’s the principle of the thing. I work hard, and when I come home, sometimes I just want to crash on the couch and veg. In a perfect world, anyone would find something to chill out to on any of their free TV channels. But as of now, for me and others in my area, two of our “big five” free TV networks, are no longer free.
Not really looking for advice here (although if anyone has any they want to offer, that’d be fine). But in the long run, I have to figure out what to do on my own. Maybe I’ll luck out and the station will put a tower a half-mile from my apartment. But maybe said tower will have the power of that jazz radio station from the Simpsons episode where Bleeding Gums dies. Who knows?
Sigh.