Back in the day, our public television stations were the only channels on the UHF band. However, I understand that that may be have just been unique to the NYC area. Did any of you have to tune into the big networks with the wobbly little dial? Was reception as iffy on the UHF band for you as it was for us, most of the time?
The big 3 were on VHF (PBS as well), but UHF carried more than just public stations. There were also independent and foreign-language channels. Reception was just fine (often better than VHF, actually). The independent stations tended to get affiliated over time with quasi-networks like The WB, UPN, and The CW.
In the SF Bay Area there were a few independent stations on UHF, but none of the majors. As you said, many of the stations were public TV stations as I remember. One of the stations ran reruns of old TV shows, but I didn’t wander over there very often because reception was always iffy at best, even with the small round antenna.
There were always a couple independent stations on UHF along with PBS. The big 3 were always on VHF until FOX got going and started buying stations, which bumped one on to UHF.
Sometimes it’s weird seeing old Doctor Who in total clarity.
What’s even more weird is when people on an old tv show are watching tv and THAT TV is perfectly clear. If it showed what tv was really like back in the 70’s they would never get reception that good. But you have to figure that the original audience of the show was watching over an analog signal that would be adding the needed fuzziness to the tv on the tv to make it look real.
Hope you can follow that.
First of all, thanks for the earworm.
Wikipedia claims that
but that doesn’t match my experience. When I was growing up in Springfield, IL in the 70s, before we got cable, the only channels we got were on the UHF dial: the local station, Channel 20, was an NBC affiliate; Channel 17, the ABC affiliate, was based in Decatur, about 30 miles away; and Channel 49 was a local retransmission of the CBS Channel 3 based in Champaign, about 85 miles away. Reception on all of them was fairly decent—sometimes a little fuzzy on the Decatur station—but I didn’t really know or expect anything better. Also, we could sometimes get a fuzzy version of Channel 12, the PBS station also based in Champaign. There was also a local independent station (55) that we got sometime in the early 80s, that eventually became a Fox affiliate.
So, long story short, in a small city like Springfield, our “big three” channels were all on the UHF dial.
Southern California, in my day, had to deal with tropospheric propagation due to unique geographic features of the region, which meant that, even though the San Diego and LA stations’ transmitters were more than 100 miles apart from each other, they couldn’t transmit on the same channel without producing interference.
Which meant that for those of us in San Diego, most of our local stations were on UHF - NBC was on channel 39, and the stations that eventually became UPN and WB affiliates were on 51 and 69. PBS, oddly enough, was on VHF - channel 12, I believe.
I grew up in rural Louisiana. We had 2 1/2 network stations on VHF (ABC, and CBS - NBC was the 1/2 because it only came in well enough to watch some of the time). We also had PBS on channel 13. However, we had a big UHF antenna that my parents claimed was useless until I started messing with it. Between the adjustments on the antenna itself and fine tuning the TV, I could pick up UHF stations coming out of Dallas about 200 miles away especially during certain weather conditions. That was HUGE because we couldn’t get cable because it wasn’t available where we lived until a few years later. I felt like I hit the jackpot when I found out we could (barely) pick up reruns of everything from The Andy Griffith Show to Gilligan’s Island on the UHF band.
How far back in the day do you want to go?
In a lot of smaller cities, there were only one or two VHF stations allocated. Up until the late 1970s, you could bet with near certainty that ABC would be found on UHF, if anywhere, in those places. (ABC was definitely third rate in those days.)
One odd case. Evansville, Indiana was originally allocated just two UHF stations, which affiliated with NBC and CBS. By the time the city got a VHF stations, those two stations were entrenched and the VHF station ended up with ABC.
Like Dr. Strangelove, I got pretty good reception on UHF, but tuning it in took a definite skill set, geographic proximity, and some luck.
UHF set top antennas can be tricky with aiming.
channels could be assigned every other or every third channel number to prevent interference, nearby cities also need to be considered. so VHF might handle 5 stations to fewer.
In Wisconsin, most of the Madison TV stations were on UHF (except for Channel 3), presumably because Madison was too close to the VHF dominated Milwaukee market (and perhaps even Chicago was too close for FCC rules on interference) Where I grew up in the Green Bay media market, it was the traditional setup. 2, 5, 11 on VHF were the big network stations, 26 and 38 were the independent and PBS station on UHF.
The local Detroit big 3 stations were all VHF until Fox bought Channel 2, previously CBS, which moved to channel 62. When I lived in the Lansing area, they were all VHF as well, but our ABC station was out of Flint, I think. They now have a more local ABC on 53.
Currently I can receive Toledo as well, and NBC was channel 24 prior to the switch and still uses 24 as its virtual channel (not sure what the real channel is).
While there are factual answers here, opinions are being solicited. Moved from General Questions to IMHO.
samclem, moderator
Opinions?
Ah, yes. The great UHF reception discussion of 2014. Generations from now people will resurrect this thread to learn about how fuzzy our video was in the 1970s!
Wow. This New Yorker never appreciated how good he had it as a kid. We had CBS on 2, NBC on 4, ABC on 7, and independents on 5 9 and 11. We also had PBS on 13, but the reception wasn’t as good as the other VHF. There were a few UHF stations too, but the reception was so bad that it wasn’t worth the effort to watch shows whose content was pretty poor too.
Wheel of Fish was always pretty great.
I’m surprised to see that I’m the first.
When I grew up in Pennsylvania in the 60s, we had two TV stations in our town. Channel 6 was NBC and 56 (later moved to 19) was CBS. But we could also pick up Pittsburgh station with a roof antenna. Channel 2 was also CBS and came in better than our UHF CBS station. Channel 4, which was ABC, was also clear. So we watched our local NBC station and Pittsburgh for CBS and ABC. Channel 11 was also NBC in Pittsburgh, but it didn’t come in as well as the others. We did watch non-NBC shows such as wrestling and the late night Chiller Theater, though. We didn’t bother much with PBS, which was on Channel 13 and didn’t come in too clearly.
As I stated over in the MMP
Last weeks MMP got me thinking to how lucky I was growing up in the coal fields in northeastern PA in the early 60s. We not only had our own ways of making fun - like crushing rocks in railroad switches and making passable footballs from old newspapers but ----- we also had a lot of culture. Because the mountains made VHF/Network television almost impossible. As a result we had all these little UHF stations that ran - well - just about anything they could get for free. Old reruns of Uncle Milty and the Lone Ranger, the Three Stooges. And when the weather was just the right kind of bad we could get the Cool Ghoul; the one and only John Zacherle (not that idiot wanna-be from Ohio). We even had this local kids show (that showed afternoon B movies and cartoons) hosted by a drunk who hated kids and rarely tried to hide his contempt for his audience. I’ve often thought someone from “Laugh-In” most have been from the Wyoming Valley because the original was “Uncle Al” but with an attitude.
But best of all was all the British shows; mostly from PBS stations. I was shocked to arrive at Pitt in the 70s and learn that not everyone knew Doctor Who. The find out folks in this big city were just finding Monty Python. That not only had my fellow freshmen missed the British version of TW3 (This Is The Week That Was) but most had missed the network US version as well and as a result could not sing “The Vatican Rag” or the theme song for WW III by heart. I had to wait to see one of my “back home buddies” to talk about episodes of UFO, for Gods sake.
OK - none of us saw the original Star Trek or Batman until reruns. But we had a sense of culture our BK Knight’s wearing contemporaries were just finding out about.
In Chicago, the big three, plus public TV, plus WGN were all VHF. I think it was sometime in the 60s when I remember UHF stations. I think they were 26 and 32 or something. The reception wasn’t that great and there wasn’t really anything I wanted to see on them.
As a NYer, I concur. We would watch the five hours of Italian language programming on 47, some Sundays were good, others, the reception was too poor to bother. Channel 68 would come in decently most times, and I’ll never forget how geekily happy I was to pick up channel 17 from Philadelphia one late night