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Antenna Sales Are Rising, In Another Sign of Churn In TV Watching (startribune.com)
Rick Schumann shares a report from Star Tribune: Twenty percent of homes in the U.S. use a digital antenna to access live TV, up from 16 percent just two years ago, according to Parks Associates market research in Texas. The Twin Cities has an even higher antenna percentage. Local antenna installers say business has been rising about 20 percent to 25 percent annually for several years. It's the eighth largest broadcast-only market in the country, with more than 22 percent of homes using antennas to get local TV, according to TVb.org, a local broadcast trade association. Duane, Wawrzyniak, owner of Electronic Servicing in Silver Lake, Minnesota, cites high TV bills every month for the increased antenna sales. According to the report, "In the Twin Cities and much of Minnesota, antenna users can receive 10 to 60 TV channels, often in high-definition quality, over the air at no expense."
You can check the DTV signals that are available at your location here.
You can check the DTV signals that are available at your location here.
It doesn't surprise me that broadcast-only is increasing especially if it includes people with broadband-only.
If most of your entertainment is coming from netflix but you occasionally want to watch the news,
it makes sense to get an antenna versus paying high prices for a cable service you don't need.
Streaming video is great, but when it comes to watching news or local sports, having access to the local TV stations is still useful. An OTA antenna can fill in that gap, allowing you to still have access to live TV without an expensive monthly fee
I do wonder how much longer OTA broadcasting is going to be around, though. ATSC is an incredibly inefficient standard (hell, it still uses MPEG-2 video! That's a few codec generations behind) and you just know telcos and others are desperate to get their hands on that spectrum. I'm glad more people are starting to tune in; that means there will be more pressure to preserve it. I just worry that most of these people are getting up there in age, and that this trend will reverse again once we start losing them.
Some people just like to build stuff. There is an inherent satisfaction factor that you cannot buy, in creating something yourself.
Did his post touch a sore topic with you? It rather seems that way.
Netflix is slowly but surely bringing unskippable ads back, so...piracy it is.