Maybe it’s a good thing. If there was even a faint chance of capturing a TV signal from my home in Columbia, I’d be up on the roof fiddling with an antenna and would probably fall and break my neck.
But it galls me to no end that rural areas can no longer get free, over-the-public-airwaves TV service – despite having previously been able to for decades.
That’s because the government mandated a switch from analog to digital. Digital is much better if you can get it but doesn’t have nearly the range of the old signals. So instead of a sometimes-blurry picture, it’s no picture.
Chalk another victory up to the law of unintended consequences (I should note that I can get several PBS stations via broadcast, if the weather is just right. But come on. There’s only so many nature programs, British comedies, Lawrence Welk reruns, furry, didactic children’s shows and desperate pleas for help from “viewers like me” that any of us can stand).
Some history: Congress passed a law in 1996 requiring a switch to digital TV broadcasts by 2006 (it was later pushed back three times). I remember being excited when that news hit. I looked forward to the clear signal it promised, free of the squelches and blips that marked the TV-viewing experience of my youth.
When the date drew near, the government provided coupons for free tuners that you could attach to your analog TV to get a digital signal. TV stations flipped the switch on June 12, 2009.
It’s been great for more highly populated areas. My in-laws in Tupelo can get nearly 20 channels over the air. A Federal Communications Commission online reception map shows seven channels in Hattiesburg, with many of those ostensibly having sub-channels.
That same service says I should be able to get three moderate signals from Columbia, CBS, NBC and ABC. Yet I get none of them. Another site, antennaweb.org, says no channels are available from my address. The nearest antenna is 37 miles away in a rural area north of Petal. I have no chance getting that.
That’s because of what’s called the “cliff effect.” There’s not a gradual weakening of the digital signal; you just fall off the cliff and get nothing once the signal weakens.
And the signals are far weaker because the power of digital TV signals is about one-fifth that of the old analog ones. Some kind of upgrade that turned out to be.
Congress and the FCC have shown no indications of doing anything about these problems. Yet rural Americans are exactly the ones who are more likely to not be able to afford cable, satellite or streaming TV services (admittedly I can afford them but am just too cheap).
This points to a larger problem in our country: If you want good stuff, you have to go to big cities. Rural areas are dying because of a million different examples of this.
Some of that is the market at work, and I don’t expect private businesses to go to areas with small populations where it’s difficult to make a profit. But I would expect our government to serve these areas, as it did with electricity during the New Deal. But instead, its policy regarding digital TV has further chipped away at the quality of life in rural America. n
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him at csmith@columbianprogress.com or (601) 736-2611.
