{"id":56386,"date":"2013-10-31T23:34:21","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T05:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/latest-devices-hogging-the-air\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T15:53:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T15:53:27","slug":"latest-devices-hogging-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/latest-devices-hogging-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest devices hogging the air"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Antennae
Antennae signal threatened for local residents<br><br>The Southwest Colorado Translator Association is a special TV district that serves more than 4,000 homes in a three-county area.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As millions of customers use their phones to access the Internet, log onto Facebook, text their friends and tweet the world \u2013 all while making endless phone calls \u2013 they require more and more over-the-air frequencies.<\/p>\n

But those same frequencies are also used by over-the-air broadcasters, including the Southwest Colorado Television Translator Association, to provide rural areas with television news, sports, and entertainment via an antennae.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they want to do is take away one-third to half of our frequencies and give them to the Internet and phone providers because they think people need that more than over-the-air broadcast,\u201d said district manager Wayne Johnson. \u201cThe result will mean less channels, and in some very rural areas, no more channels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using a simple roof antennae, anyone in this region can access up to 60 channels including networks from Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Denver and even Chicago. Local viewers enjoy national sports (including Bronco games) network dramas and comedies along with news, C-Span, and PBS documentaries like NOVA, Frontline, and Nature, plus more.<\/p>\n

The service is a good deal, too. Besides purchasing a $70 antennae, and chipping in a few dollars per year per household on the property-tax bill, it is all practically free, paid for by a .77 mill, that generates a budget of $500,000 per year to maintain a network of 11 translators.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this tough economy, a lot of people dropped satellite and cable and put up the antennae,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt\u2019s one less monthly bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

The district serves about 4,000 homes, and there is no limit to how many homes can access the signal.<\/p>\n

But Colorado\u2019s mountainous and rugged terrain depends on the district\u2019s translators to feed the signals into the nooks and crannies of valley towns like Dolores and rural communities in general, including Dove Creek, Cortez, Mancos, and Hesperus.<\/p>\n

As part of the Broadband Spectrum Act, passed as a rider to the 2011 Jobs Bill, a voluntary auction of frequencies, planned for 2014, has been set up by the Federal Communications Commission to try and free up space for broadband demand, Johnson said.<\/p>\n

He has been lobbying U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton and Washington D.C. regulatory agencies to not sacrifice rural television service in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be a world of hurt if they get what they want. We could lose channels from 60 down to 32. San Juan County, Utah, would be shut down because everything there is from channels 36 to 47,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Justin Sasso, president and CEO of the Colorado Broadcasters Association, agreed that rural, over-the-air television access via antennae is at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people would be become underserved, or no longer served,\u201d he said in phone interview. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is an administration in D.C. that really wants to push broadband, and is willing to do so at the expense of the infrastructure of one of the most trusted resources that Coloradoans go to all the time \u2014 over-the-air broadcast.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the upcoming, nationwide frequency auction will go is uncertain. Broadcasters are being asked to give up frequencies voluntarily, Sasso said, which is unlikely for rural associations dedicated to serving their community with television stations and information.<\/p>\n

How to best serve the community with a limited amount of over-the-air frequencies is the debate the country is having in the midst of the trend toward mobile communication devices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith television broadcasting you can have one person or a million people tuned into the same signal and it doesn\u2019t dilute the signal,\u201d Sasso said. \u201cBut get 15,000 people jumping on a broadband network to all text and Twitter and Facebook each other at the same time it will shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CBA\u2019s concern is that broadband industry is trying to \u201charvest frequencies,\u201d and they have political support of the larger cities and in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we present our concerns we tend to be more of an annoyance because our problems don\u2019t play into their large plan to facilitate broadband in quick fashion,\u201d Sasso said.<\/p>\n

One argument broadband promoters make for more frequencies is to accommodate emergency communications and prevent shutdowns during big floods or storms.<\/p>\n

But Sasso said there have been no studies confirming that would solve the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom what our engineers tell us, you could give them all of the spectrum, and it would still not be enough to serve those mass waves of emergency situations,\u201d he said. \u201cIt should not be at the expense of people who enjoy over-the-air television. There is room for everyone to play. When an emergency shuts down broadband, people go to their TV for information and news.\u201d<\/p>\n

If broadband promoters end up dominating the market it would take a couple of years to manifest itself in the loss of local television, Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re always fighting these battles,\u201d he said. \u201cWe lost channels 52-59 a while back, and prior to that it was 60-83 to the cell industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Southeast, Utah is especially vulnerable. Loss of too many television frequencies to broadband could shut down the translator on Abajo Peak, which serves Aneth, Mexican Hat, and Bluff, as well as Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey keep saying we\u2019re going to be OK, but they don\u2019t realize that without frequencies we lose translators that are depended on to shoot the signals into rural and mountainous areas,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Antennae signal threatened for local residents<br><br>The Southwest Colorado Translator Association is a special TV district that serves more than 4,000 homes in a three-county area.du1-i-syn As millions of customers use their phones to access the Internet, log onto Facebook, text their friends and tweet the world \u2013 all while making endless phone calls \u2013 they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-56386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56386"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62580,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56386\/revisions\/62580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56386"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=56386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}