RVers Will Find “Off-Air” TV Viewing Hit-and-Miss at Best

Without the intervention of the TV Good Fairy, RVers returning to Quartzsite beware: If you have an addiction to a given TV program, better bring your own satellite system. Since the replacement of analog TV with digital broadcasts, off-air (antenna received) television in Quartzsite has become sporadic, at best.

Before the big changeover, TV reception in Quartzsite meant a CBS and NBC from Yuma, coming in directly. A handful of other stations including most of the major networks plus Public Broadcast winged into this part of the county via a “translator” on Cunningham Peak, just southwest of town. A couple of months before the mandated change, the Phoenix PBS station “jumped the gun,” and went digital. The station then vanished from the translator, but as we’ve reported, reappeared in digital format direct from Phoenix.

When the “Big Day” arrived, tuning the dial revealed all stations that used to appear on the translator were gone. The explanation: The volunteers that operated the station just didn’t have the wherewithal to make the change from analog to digital. At the same time, the Phoenix NBC affiliate boomed into town in digital, right along with PBS. What about those Yuma stations? The NBC station (channel 11) showed up, although for RVers with “close to the ground” antennas, the signal wasn’t dependable–sometimes it was there, and often it was a fractured, stuttering sound and view. Yuma’s CBS station (channel 13) was like Rhett Butler, “gone with the wind.”

The following Monday, about three days “after transition,” something evil happened. Both of the stations that Quartzsite had been receiving in digital, NBC and PBS, vanished. A call to the NBC station revealed that they had been forced to reduce their power by the federal government. But what about PBS? The Chief Engineer there told us their power had actually been boosted up. “Why are you gone?” we asked. It takes a BIG engineer to humbly admit, “I don’t know.”

So where are we now? If you’ve “GOT” to have television, sign up for satellite service, or prepare to watch only NBC, and mostly at night, about the only time that you can count on decent reception. It’s been an interesting “transition” for us. We talk a lot more. Play a few hands of cards (and usually SHE wins). Go to bed earlier. Maybe the digital transition has had some real benefits after all.

photo: madnzany on flckr.com