Broadcast executives warn the FCC that NextGen TV encryption could turn free over-the-air TV into gambling and pay-TV platforms, with major implications for consumers.
Let’s just cut the shit and admit that over-the-air broadcast television is effectively dead.
This is why Net Neutrality mattered, because the future isn’t in old tech (radio broadcast) being consumed by DRM in desperate plays to stay relevant and/or profitable.
The future was always in things like YouTube, Netflix, and other online content delivery services. Which is why strict regulation of Net Neutrality and strict regulation of such services was and continues to be so important.
No, the infrastructure isn’t “open” like broadcast airwaves, which technically anyone with a license and equipment can jump into using, whereas internet infrastructure is all privately owned wired networking. The fact that it is different isn’t an excuse for any and all governments to have just effectively given up on regulation of those spaces when they’re where the media-consuming public happen to be. That’s why we needed legislation of these things instead of a back and forth wankery of the FCC changing how the internet is classified over and over again in between warring political factions.
I can almost guarantee you that nobody under the age of 30 gives a singly flying fuck about having an antenna on a television. They’re probably watching more than half their media on their phone or tablet anyway.
The real reason that this kind of change is happening to over-the-air broadcasting is because it doesn’t have enough viewers, and by extension, enough advertising, to sustain it as a model anymore.
I think the loss of over-the-air programming isn’t the best thing, but I also think it’s stupid to keep holding on to this idea like it matters very much in 2026 where if you asked a kid in their twenties if they even knew what an antenna for a television was they’d probably go “what the fuck are you even talking about?”
But I mean we can’t even regulate shit like paid political speech online needing to say that it is paid political speech, so fat chance of any useful legislation coming anytime soon. US government in particular has been broken as fuck for three decades.
While you’re probably right about the younger generation, there’s currently a huge movement away from cable and a million online streaming services and back to OTA. It’s why the antenna I bought 15 yrs ago now costs 5x what it did then.
My wife and I dropped cable 13yrs ago now and between the OTA, free streaming like Twitch and YouTube, and such, and buying physical BluRays we haven’t missed it.
I can almost guarantee you that nobody under the age of 30 gives a singly flying fuck about having an antenna on a television. They’re probably watching more than half their media on their phone or tablet anyway.
…and…
if you asked a kid in their twenties if they even knew what an antenna for a television was they’d probably go “what the fuck are you even talking about?”
I’m not sure that’s accurate. Gen Z and younger are apparently re-embracing OTA TV.
"The study found that younger viewers now over-index on digital antenna usage compared to their older (50+ year-old) counterparts (23% and 15%, respectively). " source
I’m much older but OTA TV is still a nearly daily use in our house even if the same content is available on various streaming services. DVR means skipping commecials while also getting a much better image quality than highly compressed streaming.
We found OTA TV is a great compliment to streaming. There’s no need to pay a cable/satellite subscription, you don’t have to constantly worry about that bill going up year over year or a local channel being blacked out because of contract disputes. There’s no “service” to have to worry about going out.
I just went through the annoying ass process of looking for my OTA antenna for my TV for the Super Bowl because you had to pay a subscription in order to watch it anywhere else and I figured that the OTA channels would at least have it on.
In the end, I gave up trying to find a live play of it and will eventually watch the highlight reels if I even care that much.
I probably threw the antenna away because as you said, no one watches antenna TV any more.
If you find a replay of the whole game, don’t bother with anything but the 4th quarter. But honestly the whole thing is pretty skippable unless you’re a Seahawks fan
Also, depending on where you live its a pointless exercise. I ended up throwing mine away not because I didn’t want access to OTA television, but because I lived in a valley on the other side of mountains where all the broadcast antennae in Seattle are. So even being on the top floor of a building with my antenna as high as I could possibly mount it I still got exactly one channel total that came through and it was still glitchy a lot of the time. God the digital changeover ruined OTA broadcasts, because at least when you used to have weak signal you could tweak the antenna until the picture looked halfway decent, but no amount of tweaking fixes the digital glitching that happens from dropped packets.
Anyway, yeah, if you live in an unfortunately placed area, you need a 30 foot tall antennae pole on top of your building to even maybe have the opportunity to catch some broadcast channels. Stupid.
Well, technically. They drop out more often than not so its essentially worthless. To get decent reception, I’d need to go to a motorized high gain directional.
Its been quite a few years since OTA has been a realistic option for me, and why I have had a media server since Netflix only offered DVDs by mail.
This is almost my exact problem. I am at the bottom of the hill of my neighborhood with terrible signal. It’s bad enough that Verizon and AT&T mobile carriers do not get signal at my house. I had to spin up a guest wifi ssid for visitors to have access on their mobile phones.
I think when I tried the OTA antenna I get maybe 3 channels.
I don’t know if Verizon of AT&T offer these but T-Mobile used to have small cellular sites you could basically rent them to plug into your wired internet and it would piggyback off your internet to make a small cellular hotspot to give you good cell signal. I had one when I lived out in the boonies for a while.
EDIT: Looks like the ones T-Mobile used to offer are all End-of-Life and they don’t even want them back from customers because they were for 3G/4G and they’re moving all services to 5G.
Yea, I’m aware of those from working in telephony but cannot justify a DAS in my house, for visitors, when T-Mobile has perfect signal for us all through the house as well as the woods behind my house.
It’s just easier to have people log in to my guest wifi ssid since modern smartphones have moved to SMS/Voice allowed to go over a data network that isn’t cellular.
I’ve been wanting to watch the Olympics, but have so far failed because my previous VPN + Canadian coverage strategy doesn’t work (CBC requires an account now) and I can’t find my TV remote to switch the input from my set-top box to the antenna.
That worked when TV was analog and they were running megawatt transmitters. It doesn’t do so well with the low power digital stations unless you are close to the transmitters.
The best way to watch sports is to go to the arena, the second best way is to go to the pub/bar/sports cafe and watch with the neighbours. Like the old days.
Lets be honest, going to the arena sucks. Especially for a game like football where you will almost certainly be crazy far away from any action. I’ve gone to a few and outside the “it was cool to say you were there” part, I’d rather just watch it on TV. Net even taking the cost into account.
Can’t really categorically say one way is best or worst. Depends on the individual arena (location relative to you and transportation options, suitability of the arena to the sport, concession prices, concession quality, weather if the arena is open), the teams playing, the personality of the other fans near you, your own personality. It’s all good.
Let’s just cut the shit and admit that over-the-air broadcast television is effectively dead.
This is why Net Neutrality mattered, because the future isn’t in old tech (radio broadcast) being consumed by DRM in desperate plays to stay relevant and/or profitable.
The future was always in things like YouTube, Netflix, and other online content delivery services. Which is why strict regulation of Net Neutrality and strict regulation of such services was and continues to be so important.
No, the infrastructure isn’t “open” like broadcast airwaves, which technically anyone with a license and equipment can jump into using, whereas internet infrastructure is all privately owned wired networking. The fact that it is different isn’t an excuse for any and all governments to have just effectively given up on regulation of those spaces when they’re where the media-consuming public happen to be. That’s why we needed legislation of these things instead of a back and forth wankery of the FCC changing how the internet is classified over and over again in between warring political factions.
I can almost guarantee you that nobody under the age of 30 gives a singly flying fuck about having an antenna on a television. They’re probably watching more than half their media on their phone or tablet anyway.
The real reason that this kind of change is happening to over-the-air broadcasting is because it doesn’t have enough viewers, and by extension, enough advertising, to sustain it as a model anymore.
I think the loss of over-the-air programming isn’t the best thing, but I also think it’s stupid to keep holding on to this idea like it matters very much in 2026 where if you asked a kid in their twenties if they even knew what an antenna for a television was they’d probably go “what the fuck are you even talking about?”
But I mean we can’t even regulate shit like paid political speech online needing to say that it is paid political speech, so fat chance of any useful legislation coming anytime soon. US government in particular has been broken as fuck for three decades.
While you’re probably right about the younger generation, there’s currently a huge movement away from cable and a million online streaming services and back to OTA. It’s why the antenna I bought 15 yrs ago now costs 5x what it did then.
My wife and I dropped cable 13yrs ago now and between the OTA, free streaming like Twitch and YouTube, and such, and buying physical BluRays we haven’t missed it.
I live 70 miles from my nearest broadcast. I invested in a nice antenna and an HDHomerun years ago.
Otherwise we’re beholden to $60+ a month for the basic cable package to watch any sports or local news.
Screw that.
…and…
I’m not sure that’s accurate. Gen Z and younger are apparently re-embracing OTA TV.
"The study found that younger viewers now over-index on digital antenna usage compared to their older (50+ year-old) counterparts (23% and 15%, respectively). " source
I’m much older but OTA TV is still a nearly daily use in our house even if the same content is available on various streaming services. DVR means skipping commecials while also getting a much better image quality than highly compressed streaming.
We found OTA TV is a great compliment to streaming. There’s no need to pay a cable/satellite subscription, you don’t have to constantly worry about that bill going up year over year or a local channel being blacked out because of contract disputes. There’s no “service” to have to worry about going out.
I just went through the annoying ass process of looking for my OTA antenna for my TV for the Super Bowl because you had to pay a subscription in order to watch it anywhere else and I figured that the OTA channels would at least have it on.
In the end, I gave up trying to find a live play of it and will eventually watch the highlight reels if I even care that much.
I probably threw the antenna away because as you said, no one watches antenna TV any more.
If you find a replay of the whole game, don’t bother with anything but the 4th quarter. But honestly the whole thing is pretty skippable unless you’re a Seahawks fan
Also, depending on where you live its a pointless exercise. I ended up throwing mine away not because I didn’t want access to OTA television, but because I lived in a valley on the other side of mountains where all the broadcast antennae in Seattle are. So even being on the top floor of a building with my antenna as high as I could possibly mount it I still got exactly one channel total that came through and it was still glitchy a lot of the time. God the digital changeover ruined OTA broadcasts, because at least when you used to have weak signal you could tweak the antenna until the picture looked halfway decent, but no amount of tweaking fixes the digital glitching that happens from dropped packets.
Anyway, yeah, if you live in an unfortunately placed area, you need a 30 foot tall antennae pole on top of your building to even maybe have the opportunity to catch some broadcast channels. Stupid.
5 channels here!
Well, technically. They drop out more often than not so its essentially worthless. To get decent reception, I’d need to go to a motorized high gain directional.
Its been quite a few years since OTA has been a realistic option for me, and why I have had a media server since Netflix only offered DVDs by mail.
This is almost my exact problem. I am at the bottom of the hill of my neighborhood with terrible signal. It’s bad enough that Verizon and AT&T mobile carriers do not get signal at my house. I had to spin up a guest wifi ssid for visitors to have access on their mobile phones.
I think when I tried the OTA antenna I get maybe 3 channels.
I don’t know if Verizon of AT&T offer these but T-Mobile used to have small cellular sites you could basically rent them to plug into your wired internet and it would piggyback off your internet to make a small cellular hotspot to give you good cell signal. I had one when I lived out in the boonies for a while.
EDIT: Looks like the ones T-Mobile used to offer are all End-of-Life and they don’t even want them back from customers because they were for 3G/4G and they’re moving all services to 5G.
https://tmo.report/2025/04/t-mobiles-infamous-cellspot-coverage-devices-are-now-end-of-life/
EDIT II: Looks like AT&T may offer some still though:
https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1452148/
Yea, I’m aware of those from working in telephony but cannot justify a DAS in my house, for visitors, when T-Mobile has perfect signal for us all through the house as well as the woods behind my house.
It’s just easier to have people log in to my guest wifi ssid since modern smartphones have moved to SMS/Voice allowed to go over a data network that isn’t cellular.
I’ve been wanting to watch the Olympics, but have so far failed because my previous VPN + Canadian coverage strategy doesn’t work (CBC requires an account now) and I can’t find my TV remote to switch the input from my set-top box to the antenna.
Lucky enough that a bent paperclip gets me most channels here.
That worked when TV was analog and they were running megawatt transmitters. It doesn’t do so well with the low power digital stations unless you are close to the transmitters.
I know, I am lucky enough to be close.
The best way to watch sports is to go to the arena, the second best way is to go to the pub/bar/sports cafe and watch with the neighbours. Like the old days.
Lets be honest, going to the arena sucks. Especially for a game like football where you will almost certainly be crazy far away from any action. I’ve gone to a few and outside the “it was cool to say you were there” part, I’d rather just watch it on TV. Net even taking the cost into account.
Can’t really categorically say one way is best or worst. Depends on the individual arena (location relative to you and transportation options, suitability of the arena to the sport, concession prices, concession quality, weather if the arena is open), the teams playing, the personality of the other fans near you, your own personality. It’s all good.