How Many Full Power TV Station In The USA? And Follow Up Question.

[Markxxx]

I was reading a thread on spectrum allocation at AVS forums. It got me to thinking.

How many full power TV stations are in the USA? I checked Trip's Website, but didn't see a total. I'm sure Trip would know. I am not including LP.

The discussion at the AVS forums was taking back spectrum for other uses.

Here's my follow up question.

I think each TV station get 6mb of bandwidth (correct me if wrong). But that can be used many ways.

Suppose, the government wanted to limit, OTA broadcasting to standard def TV (SDTV) only and do away with high-def broadcasts.

I realize that isn't gonna happen and wouldn't be a popular idea.

So how much spectrum would be needed to give each full power TV station ONE channel and that allotment would be for SDTV broadcast only.

The idea behind the argument I read was with analog TV stations only got one channel. So why give them up to six SD channels with digital?

The idea is if you went SD broadcasting you could clear up the spectrum. If this was done, how much would be used?

I know most people on this board love their OTA HDTV so I don't want to debate that, though that would make an interesting thread, I was just wonder what the minimum spectrum allocation you could get by with, if we went to SD OTA broadcasting.

Thanks

 

[KML0224]

12 full-power TV stations in Connecticut, listing by the station's virtual channel:

WFSB-TV (CBS) channel 3 Hartford
WTNH-TV (ABC) channel 8 New Haven
WUVN-TV (UNI) channel 18 Hartford
WCCT-TV (CW) channel 20 Waterbury
WEDH-TV (PBS) channel 24 Hartford
WHPX-TV (ION) channel 26 New London
WVIT-TV (NBC) channel 30 New Britain
WSAH-TV (RTV) channel 43 Bridgeport [* New York City market]
WEDW-TV (PBS) channel 49 Bridgeport [* New York City market]
WEDN-TV (PBS) channel 53 Norwich
WCTX-TV (MY) channel 59 New Haven
WTIC-TV (FOX) channel 61 Hartford

This may be be 13, if WEDY-TV (PBS) channel 65 of New Haven is on the air on not. I never received a trace of their signal here in New Britain (southern Hartford County), analog or digital.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I think each TV station get 6mb of bandwidth (correct me if wrong). But that can be used many ways.

6 MHz, not Mb. 6 MHz of bandwidth allows 19.39Mbit per second of throughput.

The idea is if you went SD broadcasting you could clear up the spectrum. If this was done, how much would be used?

The throughput is (roughly) a linear function of the bandwidth. So a 1MHz wide channel would allow a single SD service to exist. However, due to adjacency requirements, the number of possible allocations in the current television bands would not necessarily increase by a factor of six. The actual growth would depend on the rules adopted by regulators.

 

[RadioDaze]

I couldn't locate a count on the FCC website, but 100000watts.com pegs the number of full power TV stations in the U.S. at 1,805.

 

[tripinva]

How many full power TV stations are in the USA? I checked Trip's Website, but didn't see a total. I'm sure Trip would know. I am not including LP.

http://www.rabbitears.info/statistics.php

The problem with the number (2118) on that page is that it includes Mexico and Canada. I ran a query on my database that removed stations from Canada and Mexico that are listed on RabbitEars and got 1,777.

- Trip

 

[kenglish]

http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/BroadcastStationTotals.html

 

[RadioDaze]

Those channel statistical breakdowns are a very interesting read.

The channel with the most full power stations in the UHF-preferred post-digital age is actually VHF channel 13, with 75 stations, followed by another VHF, channel 7 (64) in second place. Rounding out the top five are also all VHFs-- channel 10 (63), channel 8 (62) and channel 12 (56).

The most-popular channel for UHF stations? Channel 19 with 47 stations (seventh overall behind sixth-place channel 11 with 55). Channel 22 is the second-most popular UHF channel with 44 stations.

Perhaps most interesting is the number of low-band VHF stations, as channels 2-6 are least ideal for digital broadcasts. Channel 5 leads the pack with 16 stations, two times more than second-place channel 6 which has only 8 stations. Channels 5 and 6 are often discussed on other boards here in regard to a possible FM band expansion.

The least popular of all channels (besides channel 37 ;D ) is channel 4 with only two stations still using it.

 

[KML0224]

I had to think who had the fewest stations licensed to them. I believe it's Delaware and then Rhode Island. The Diamond State has 2 stations in Wilmington and 1 station in Seaford, while Providence has 4 stations and Block Island (New Shoreham, RI) has one.

 

[RadioDaze]

And, on the other end, the ten states with the most licensed full-power TV stations:

1. Texas 138
2. California 108
3. Florida 95
4. New York 59
5. Michgan 53
6. Ohio 52
7. North Carolina 51
8. Illinois 48
9. Georgia 47
10. Pennsylvania 46


Not very surprisingly, this includes all the ten most-populous states, albeit not in the exact order they appear in that list, likely due to geography and other factors.

 

[w9wi]

The throughput is (roughly) a linear function of the bandwidth. So a 1MHz wide channel would allow a single SD service to exist. However, due to adjacency requirements, the number of possible allocations in the current television bands would not necessarily increase by a factor of six. The actual growth would depend on the rules adopted by regulators.

It should be noted that any move to change the width of the channel would make existing OTA TV sets obsolete. (not to mention a lot of transmitting equipment)

The ATSC standard calls for a single channel width, of 6MHz. There's no provision for variable channel widths/data bandwidths. You could transmit 3.2MBps worth of SD digital video/audio in a 1MHz channel, but no existing receiver could decode it.

There has been discussion of splitting bandwidth in a different way. Rather than splitting a 6MHz channel into six 1MHz wide channels, each station would use the entire 6MHz for 1/6 of the time. WKRN would transmit a data packet, then WSMV, then WTVF, then WNPT, etc... (it's a bit more complex than that, but that's the idea)

Time-division multiplexing works with existing equipment & TV sets. Indeed, that's how subchannels work. It does require that all stations involved share a common transmitter.

 

[Poledo]

Those channel statistical breakdowns are a very interesting read.

The channel with the most full power stations in the UHF-preferred post-digital age is actually VHF channel 13, with 75 stations, followed by another VHF, channel 7 (64) in second place. Rounding out the top five are also all VHFs-- channel 10 (63), channel 8 (62) and channel 12 (56).

The most-popular channel for UHF stations? Channel 19 with 47 stations (seventh overall behind sixth-place channel 11 with 55). Channel 22 is the second-most popular UHF channel with 44 stations.

Perhaps most interesting is the number of low-band VHF stations, as channels 2-6 are least ideal for digital broadcasts. Channel 5 leads the pack with 16 stations, two times more than second-place channel 6 which has only 8 stations. Channels 5 and 6 are often discussed on other boards here in regard to a possible FM band expansion.

The least popular of all channels (besides channel 37 ;D ) is channel 4 with only two stations still using it.

It's probably not a coincidence that most VHF DT stations are using their pre-transition channel numbers. I wonder if that decision was made by an engineer or a "suit"?
There also appears to be a lopsided number of non-commercial/PBS stations on the VHF band, no doubt due to significant savings on the power bill.
Another thing that pops out at me is how close together co-channel VHF stations seem to be (i.e. Albany, GA DMA has two PBS stations on OTA Channel 8 and the adjacent markets of Mobile and Panama City both have Fox on OTA channel 9)