I've been kinda sick a lot lately, (lots of dizziness - I suspect sinuses) so maybe I counted wrong, the antenna I used to have was a 75-mile range channel master rotary mounted on a chimney on 161 (rear) Washington Street from downtown New Britain, a 2 floor house in the middle of a valley. I doubt I could achieve. the same success today from my present location if the switchover never happened. Yes, there was lots of duplication, but at the time, many stations didn't have the same repetition of syndicated programs. I can remember WJAR showing the Rockford files at 4pm and no other station showing that show at any time, and not every station always carries the entire network schedule at 100%. I also remember WTNH often having Jimmy Swaggart (sp?) and the only way I could get the replaced ABC show was an out of town ABC station (most likely WGGB).
Now I'm not saying that all these stations came in at all times, WNNE was a very difficult catch, heck, even WBZ was difficult beneath WFSB, (most days it wasn't there until after 4pm, except on special occasions), but for the most part, outside of any real DX, this is the maximum of all the locals including distant signals. As far as DX, heck, I mentioned elsewhere how one day I caught WPBT ch 2 Miami on rabbit ears. Not everything was perfect, especially during the day, and much of it had to do with being able to get that rotor EXACTLY on the right spot, but at night on VHF, there was no problem getting each channel listed especially when the locals were off, it was impossible to pull in KYW when WFSB was on and the same went for channel 8.
if I just list the VHF always in, every night, in clear picture stations, the list looks like this:
2 WCBS/WGBH
3 WFSB
4 WBZ/WNBC
5 WCVB/WNYW
6 WLNE (I also had a LP station from Hartford here for a time)
7 WABC/WHDH
8 WTNH
9 WMUR/WWOR
10 WJAR/WTEN (though WJAR usually knocked most other out of the box until WHTX was there)
11 WENH/WPIX
12 WPRI
13 WNEW/WNYT
oh heck, I'll continue, it's a bit shorter
18 WUVN
19 WCDC
20 WCCT
21 WLIW
22 WWLP
24 WEDH
25 WFXT
26 WHPX
27 WUNI
30 WVIT
36 WSBE
38 WHCT-LP/WSBK (When WHCT-LP was off)
40 WGGB
43 WSAH
44 WGBX
47 WUTA-CA
48 WRNT (still get this analog now from my present location)
49 WEDW
50 WRDM (still get this analog now from my present location)
51 WDMR-LP (still get this analog now from my present location)
53 WEDN
55 WLNY (wish they didn't shut down analog so early)
56 WLVI
57 WGBY
59 WCTX
60 WNEU (HARD, due to WTIC)
61 WTIC
62 WMFP (also hard due to WTIC, I remember when they were AIN)
64 WNAC
67 WSHM
68 WBPX
69 used to get W69AC (? call) before they moved, so don't count this, but I did want to mention them as I didn't before
Basically always local were Hartford, New Haven, New London, Springfield & Waterbury (except for 51 & 28 in New Haven, and WLNY's translators, I've never gotten those). After 4pm, Boston, NYC & Providence VHF, and about an hour after sundown were the UHF in those areas. All others were a bit later in the evening and the antenna had to be set near to perfectly and n some cases the fine tune made all the difference as some channels were actually +/- 4 MHz offset.
w9wi said:
I guess I see the math a bit differently here...
I count 76 stations in analog, but a LOT of duplication. For example, 13 different ABC affiliates. I count 19 different networks. (counting each independent station, like WFME & WLNY, as a separate network)
On the DTV side I sure do count a lot fewer stations -- just eleven, not counting the ones that only come in via Dish. Again taking duplicate networks into account, I count 17 different networks.
So you have lost two choices -- but that's not nearly as bad as losing 45 choices.
(I'm also quite curious what kind of antenna you were using that delivered good quality analog pictures from four different stations on channel 6, extending from Maine to NYC. There's also three each on channels 2 and 7. I would think a LOT of those 76 analog stations were either noisy, or suffered from pretty serious co-channel interference, or both.)
