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Message: [QUOTE="FOX TV, post: 48742, member: 4493"]Antenna viewer numbers are not really accurateThere seems to be a lot of misinformation around on just how many people actually use OTA signals for TV reception. There has never been an accurate way to gauge this aspect of broadcasting, even if you consider Nielsons ratings system, which has no capability to actually measure the OTA viewers numbers.In this era of economic hard times we are currently enduring, it seems to be a simple decision about what to cut from the budget first, so goodbye satellite and cable, and hello antenna TV. I have actually advised several viewers on how to go about receiving OTA TV in the past year, and was told that they simply could not afford satellite or cable in the current economic situation.You also have these situations such as a small TV in the kitchen for the cook to watch the afternoon or evening news while preparing meals, and many other places where satellite users or cable users still use OTA signals for some TV sets, even if they do subscribe to cable or satellite.The recent snow and freezing rain storms we had over the Christmas Holidays in my area caused some problems with one of our full power transmitters, and we had to put a low power transmitter on the air while parts could be ordered. We got more calls and e-mails from OTA viewers than ever before who lost our signal, and that was only approximately half of our full power OTA audience who were outside the coverage area of the low power transmitter. If we had been completely dark, I am sure this number would have at least doubled.This tells me that there are way more people using OTA TV than at any time than in the recent past based on the amount of calls and e-mails we normally used to get when a full power analog transmitter was off the air. The novelty of DTV has also attracted new viewers who just wanted to see what all of the fuss over the DTV transition was all about.This says to me that there are a lot more antenna viewers than some inside the industry are counting, and there needs to be a better way to gauge OTA usage to actually make the numbers more accurate and meaningful. Those who want to steal the DTV bandwidth would surely like to keep those numbers as small as possible, and not show the true amount of people who still rely on OTA TV. Maybe we need a poll !![/QUOTE]

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