Since the recession began, the cutting of streaming and paid video services has declined and more have become total OTA cord cutters due to the cost. This affects ethnic and lower income households, and many use antennas in the attic or or on a balcony in apartment dwellings.
That sounds like a huge exaggeration. First, few engineers gave their numbers to engineers at other stations unless they were friends or the local SBE had "backup contact" listings.
Nielsen has a simple criteria for market inclusion of suburban counties: listening in the largest percentage to a particular market's stations determines the market that county will be included in.
They last considered removing Kenosha County in 2017 as far as I remember. Either that or it was last talked about beyond their own discussions in 2017. Some stations were apparently for it. Nielsen wanted to closer align their radio markets with their TV markets. Other stations thought WWDV had an unfair advantage. They ended up leaving it in place. It was in a Robert Feder article
Indoor antennas are only useful 20 miles or less and those pizza shape or fly swatters antennas about 30-35 miles from the transmitter even installed outside. Downtown Kenosha is 50 miles from the Chicago tv transmitters, realistically you need a deep fringe antennas and likely a 35’ tower especially if you’re not in line of sight of the transmitters or have trees or other building near by, at that point you’re looking at spending 1,500-2500 dollars for equipment and professional installation, my guess that is way to much for people to spend. Kenosha is about 35 miles from most Milwaukee transmitters and that’s even stretching it for those Walmart antennas.
In the analog days I could get clear signals from the VHF channels from Milwaukee in Evanston about 75 miles. But the signals were traveling over Lake Michigan, when the antennas was pointed to Milwaukee you just saw water because of where Evanston is located. I don’t think the digital signals does that or not as good. Even in the analog days it would be difficult to signals from 75 miles with just a rooftop antenna with obstructions in between the antenna and transmitter. It’s likely Kenosha could have seen some signal enhancement from the Chicago tv stations when they were in analog because they were traveling over mostly water but only if you were a few miles from shore.
WGN’s rf channel is 19 it shares it with WMTV in Madison and a tv station in Grand Rapids. WMTV probably doesn’t mess with WGN in Kenosha but all Grand Rapids stations mess with Chicago and Milwaukee stations that are on the same rf channels during troposphere events to at least some degree especially if you’re closer to Lake Michigan. In Harvard, IL WMTV comes in stronger than WGN checking on a spectrum analyzer (realistically it’s likely you won’t get either channel) and Harvard is in the Chicago tv market. WCIU and WFLD shared the same rf channel with LP stations from Milwaukee even with a highly directional antenna it would be impossible to pick up WFLD or WCIU 100 percent of the time in Kenosha, likely it would be unusable for the regular viewer.
This is what I was getting at in my original post. A lot of people who live in Kenosha commute to the Chicago area, which increases listenership to Chicago stations. But we can't rule out the locals who probably do listen to the Milwaukee stations more. Advertisers on Milwaukee stations will target Kenosha. I never hear Chicago stations advertise for the Kenosha market.
Yes, that happens. Years ago, a competitor in Ecuador had their whole studio robbed overnight when nobody was there. I heard about it the next morning, and I went to see the owner and offered use of my second production studio. My stations were located just four or five blocks away, so they ran telephone cable on street light posts to their studio location to link to the transmitter. We had them as guests for four or five days while they got some temporary equipment.
The only stations that have a useful signal from the Chicago into at least parts of Kenosha county are 96.9, WXLC and WPPN and the 50,000 watt AM stations. My guess most radio listening from Kenosha county residents are when they are northern Illinois, the useful signal for DT Chicago stations is up to around Waukegan.
A pair of 8-bay bowties- one aimed North and one South- have become a common configuration here and they work just fine for Chicago and Milwaukee signals. The exceptions are WBBM (RF12) and WIWN (RF5). Usually WMVS/WMVT (RF8) are strong enough to sneak in with this setup. I have no problem with Chicago stations here; I use an OLD (like late 70s vintage) Channel Master Quantum on a rotor. These antennas are VHF monsters, but are not known for stellar UHF reception.
I have to wonder if your 10 foot wire is acting as your FM antenna. You might do as well with a twin lead dipole. Back when I was very young and didn't know a lot about signals, we got a Magnavox Stereo Theater TV/AM/FM/Phonograph. I ran a wire into the BASEMENT to a wire curtain rod and connected it to one FM antenna terminal. I remember hearing WJIM-FM 97.5 and WXYZ-FM 101.1 on it, both 40-45 miles away in different directions. You might also try separating the two speaker wires to make a 5 foot half wave dipole and connecting it to your FM antenna input. As I recall, the calculated impedance of the transmission line speaker wire is somewhere in between 75 and 300 ohms. You have a mismatch at both ends, but it still works well for receiving relatively strong signals. I also remember someone who lived in the highlands area between Flint and Ann Arbor who got excellent TV reception on VHF with just a long wire, maybe 10-15 feet out the window. If you do a Longley Rice on TVFool of FMFool from that location South of Fenton, MI, everything is Line Of Sight for a good 50-60 miles in every direction. And the tower lights on a clear Night prove it.