Why It Was WMSB On Channel 10

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The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (americanarchive.org) has an exhibit devoted to National Educational Television and an extensive collection of NET shows from the '50s and '60s. Some of them are interesting, especially the NET Journal and At Issue series (sort of an early version of Frontline). But yeah, a lot of it is just "talking heads".
Some PBS stations still carried that instructional programming for in-class usage into the '90s (IIRC WGTE 30 in Toledo was one of them, while WTVS 56 had settled into a daytime mixture of kids' shows and lifestyle/how-to programs by then. I think the advent of home video largely put an end to the in-class OTA instructional programming.

In GR/Kzoo, one of the WGVU/K subs carries instructional programming.


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[organman95]

Analog VHF stations were given the opportunity to retain UHF channel assignments post-transition or move their digital assignments to the VHF band. A lot of stations chose the latter to save on the power bill (less juice required to cover the same footprint). WOOD moved from RF channel 8 analog to channel 7 digital while WWMT moved from channel 3 analog to channel 8 digital. Due to the delicate nature of ATSC 1.0 signals and increased interference factors at lower frequencies, the standard plays much better with UHF than VHF.

You're right in that many indoor and outdoor antennas manufactured these days are missing the longer elements needed for decent VHF reception. Some Yagi's have the VHF element although you have to make sure the antenna you're purchasing contains a VHF rod in the assembly. So-called "HD antennas" are no different than antennas used for analog. It's all marketing. An antenna is an antenna.

I remember right around 2008/2009 helping many customers at Walmart with the HD stuff... most of the employees were totally clueless. "Those rabbit ears (not marked HD) will work just fine." And they did. I bought one just to make sure as I lived in Houghton Lake at the time. Signals kinda bounced around a lot having a house on the south side of the lake. I'm sure it's better now than it was.