EDITOR: Local TV update – Up to 80 channels, available free!

Published 12:00 am Sunday, August 25, 2024

Every year or so we bring you up to date on what you can receive, free over the air, in Portland these days. Some folks have decided to rely on the Internet for TV, originally expecting that THAT would be free TV – although now they are finding subscription costs required and steadily rising for such services, and the Internet itself struggling to provide an ever-increasing high-data-rate TV service it was never designed for, and which deteriorates as more people use it for such a purpose.

What is the alternative? Well, there’s local TV. Fifty years ago, there were five TV channels here: KATU-ABC, KOIN-CBS, KGW-NBC, KOPB-PBS, and KPTV-“independent”. KPTV was the highest-rated independent station in the country, then – due to the lack of any independent competition, and because of running Perry Mason reruns twice every day!

Then Channel 22 went on the air in Salem, with a signal that was spotty in Portland in its early days, and Channel 49 came on the air, licensed to Vancouver – two more independent stations, increasing the variety of TV programming available here a bit.

The switch to digital TV broadcasting early this century changed what was available to you on local TV completely. First, the digital signals were either perfect – or not there at all. “Snow” and “ghosts” were no more; and the new broadcast standard allowed each station to transmit multiple different channels, and to offer film-like picture quality with “high definition”.

So today, by THE BEE’s count in Inner Southeast Portland, using an inexpensive panel antenna in the attic connecting to our TV sets, is eighty TV channels in Portland. With a set-top antenna you’d probably get fewer than that, since there are some low-power TV transmitters around here now. There is some repetition in what’s available, and there are a number of special-interest channels, but what we can get today free from a local antenna is more variety than we could ever get on cable in the last century, and the picture is far better.

For example?

Well, in addition to all those general-interest networks we got fifty years ago, and new networks like Fox and The CW, the existing stations here are transmitting all sorts of new channels. For hit shows of the past, we now have MeTV (channel 29.3), AceTV (channel 29.4), RetroTV (channel 29.5), GetTV (channel 6.2), RewindTV (channel 6.3), AntennaTV (channel 32.2), IonTV (channel 22.1), Ion Plus (channel 22.4), and Cozi (channel 12.2).

You also will find a fulltime channel offering TV quiz shows of the past (BuzzerTV, channel 20.3), two channels that combine science shows and general interest reality shows (Quest, channel 8.3, and DefyTV, channel 20.7), an all-comedy channel (Laff, channel 22.3), a channel of particular interest to Black viewers (Bounce, channel 22.2), and all-Westerns channels (Grit, channel 32.3) and Outlaw (channel 49.3). There’s even a channel that is intended to interest those who like to watch miscellaneous videos on the Internet (“TBD”, channels 2.4 and 32.4).

There’s a channel for “action” dramas (Charge, channels 2.2 and 47.3), science fiction (Comet, channel 2.3), all-classic-cartoons (MeToons, channel 29.8), all-news (ScrippsTV, channel 22.5), current court cases (CourtTV, channel 49.4), reality-TV oriented shows (TheNest, channel 47.2), reality-type TV shows with an emphasis on relationships (Dabl, channel 12.3), and even “all-scandal” reality shows (Nosey, channel 8.5).

There are channels devoted to true-crime: “Crime”, channel 8.2; Oxygen, channels 12.4 and 20.5, Mysteries (IonMysteries, channel 49.2); and several channels devoted to Hispanic programming, including the two flagships: Univision, channel47.1, and Telemundo, channel 29.1, both in high definition. There are several channels devoted to home shopping, and several more devoted to religion.

Let’s not overlook OPB. Oregon Public Broadcasting, in addition to its high-definition main channel 10, also offers a second PBS channel – “World”, which also carries many PBS programs at different times than KOPB’s main channel – and also in high definition, on channel 10.2. The “PBS Kids” channel is on 10.3. By the way, you may get two sets of all these channel 10’s, because in addition to the main signal, OPB operates a low-power repeater on Healy Heights on channel 28, which also identifies as channel 10, and carries all the same channels. If you can’t get one signal, you can get the other – and many folks get them both.

All of that is free, and being transmitted digitally, and quite a bit of it in high definition. The three weakest signals here are channels 12, 20, and 49. But for two of those, there is an immediate solution: NextGen TV, a new (but not backwards-compatible) high quality TV transmission system already on the air in Portland, relaying several channels with high power: KATU-2, KOIN-6, KGW-8, KOPB-10, KPTV-12, KRCW-32, and KPDX-49.

Many new TV sets include the ATSC-3 tuner needed to receive NextGen TV, and for sets that don’t have that, there’s a very good TV adapter box that gives excellent results, and can be used as a DVR to record ALL local channels as well – ZapperBox. It’s a little box about four inches square and an inch high, and it brings in all current digital channels, plus all the NextGen ones. We have one and can recommend it. You can research it at https://www.zapperbox.com, and you can order one or more there if you want. That box is regularly updated via the Internet with additional new features and capabilities.

By the way, NextGen TV is capable of broadcasting in 4K super high definition, and one or more of these stations sometime soon may start to take advantage of that!

In addition, if you are still willing to pay for quality TV, both DirecTV and Dish Network have very good high definition service of many channels not available on local TV, and never with any buffering! For those interested in following what was the Big Ten, and ACC – now that many Pac-12 teams have bolted to those eastern conferences – the Big Ten networks have always been part of the service we’ve received from DirecTV, as have been the Atlantic Coast Conference broadcasts.

So much choice is available for free, though, from our own local TV stations, that you really are missing out if you don’t take advantage of it. And, be sure to regularly “rescan for channels”, because new services appear from time to time that you won’t receive if you don’t.

Oh, and one very important reminder. If you are just now switching from cable TV to watching local TV – or if you buy a new TV – you will have to go into the menu of your TV and change its receiving mode from “cable TV mode” to “antenna mode” in order to get ANY local channels being transmitted above channel 12!

THE BEE periodically keeps you up to date on the Free TV scene in Portland, because nobody else does that these days, it seems. Yes, you’re welcome.