On Sat, 25 Jan 2014 16:20:12 -0500, Pat wrote:

On Fri, 24 Jan 2014 15:26:17 -0700, Arthur Conan Doyle
wrote:

dpb wrote:

Not sure what criteria was used for deciding who got to stay in VHF. In fact, I seem
to recall that during the transition, some stations moved up to UHF temporarily
before moving back down into VHF.

The lowest channels used to be the prestige channels. Big buck
network owned stations were often on 2, 3, 4, or 5. When many were
forced to UHF during the transition to digital, they applied to get
their old VHF channel back after the final switch to digital because
"everyone knows lower channels are better". However, it turns out
that multipath, reflections, skip, etc, were a much bigger problem
with digital than analog. Some stations figured that out quickly and
modified their request to stay on UHF after the transition. Others
weren't so quick and are now stuck on a VHF channel because there
aren't anymore UHF openings in their area. Digital is a little better
at avoiding adjacent channel interference, though, so more UHF
channels might be opened up by the FCC soon - not more channels
overall, but more available in an area because channel spacing isn't
as important. There is lots of debate going on about that. In my
area, two stations ended up on VHF (8 and 10). Both have coverage
problems. 10 added a 2nd remote low power transmitter on UHF channel
24 leaving which comes in loud and string here. That leaves 8 as the
only VHF for me. They had requested their old transition UHF channel
back, but it has not yet been approved. Another station claimed
adjacent channel interference would be a problem with that request. I
would love to only need VHF.
Oops. That last word was meant to be UHF.