In the past, I’ve often used my New Year’s column to summarize the state of broadcasting and highlight last year’s developments and I what I expect to happen this year. I don’t have much to add to what I wrote in my 2025 columns covering the NAB Show, ATSC yearly meeting, and, recently, the FCC’s Fifth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on NextGen TV.
In 2026, I’ll be looking to see if the transition to ATSC 3.0 accelerates. Whether it does, and at what rate, will depend on more viewers with antennas buying TV sets that have ATSC 3.0 capability. That will require more low-cost TVs and adapters. Will enough manufacturers make the effort to obtain the licenses and certifications required for sets to work with content-protected programming?
This month, I’ll share some of the free software I use to understand how TV signals make it from the transmitter to the receive antenna, both in numbers and maps. If you want to see how changing an antenna or transmitter location impacts coverage, these tools will help.
The two main tools are TVStudy, which has been significantly updated since I last wrote about it in TV Tech, and QGIS, a program that allows you to drag and drop shapefiles from TVStudy, Census.gov, or other sites for display on a map.
FCC’s TVStudy
In the past, you would have to spend thousands of dollars to get the software and databases needed to calculate a station’s terrain-limited, interference-free coverage. Today, you can download the FCC’s TVStudy for free, along with terrain and population databases and detailed technical data on every TV station in the U.S, for coverage and interference analysis.
TVStudy for MacOS and Linux is available for download here. A complete download is more than 10 GB in size—that’s large but workable with an internet connection of 50 Mbps or better. Download the manuals and follow the installation guide precisely. The documentation is excellent.
Most of the issues I’ve seen are with MySQL—TVStudy requires MySQL 5.7 or 8.0, and many Linux distributions install MariaDB by default. For Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu and Kubuntu, simply replace MariaDB with MySQL 8.0 before trying to install TVStudy. TVStudy requires Java 8. Most operating systems now default to later versions, so it may be necessary to install Java 8. Look for OpenJDK Runtime Environment build 1.8.0. Use it to open the TVStudy program.
TVStudy will download the latest TV and FM License and Management System (LMS) databases. With them, you can search for stations and study coverage and interference. This is important, as most online terrain-sensitive coverage maps do not show the impact of interference.
TVStudy 2.3.0 can create KMZ files that can be opened in Google Earth to see coverage and interference at a specific location. View the TVStudy KMZ file I’ve uploaded here. I’ve also displayed the undesired sources’ location and call signs on the map (Fig. 1).
If you are interested in learning more about TVStudy and how to use it, let me know and I’ll provide more details and tips by email or in future columns.
QGIS
QGIS is another program I currently use. Most Linux distributions have it available in their repositories. Versions are also available for MacOS and Windows. There are many QGIS tutorials online, but some are based on outdated versions or are targeted at people developing their own complicated maps, which isn’t necessary when just dragging and dropping existing shapefiles into the program. If you get frustrated with a tutorial, try another one. A well-worded question often brings a good response on Google search.
Most of the map issues I’ve seen come from using the wrong coordinate system. The spreadsheet output from TVStudy has west longitude as a positive number. If dropped into QGIS unmodified, it will end up on the other side of the Earth. When working with shapefiles, QGIS usually handles the coordinates correctly and makes the necessary conversions. Learning about coordinate systems and mapping on the web and QGIS helps answer questions like, “Why is my nondirectional contour an oval on my map?”
Spend some time getting comfortable with basic maps, then drag and drop the contours.shp and coverpts.shp files from a TVStudy study’s shapefile folder onto the map. You can use colors to display the “DSIGNAL” field strength on the map. Setting up styles can be complicated so to help you get started. I’ve uploaded some files you can use to get familiar with it here.
The map shown here (Fig. 2) was created with QGIS and some of the sample files I posted. TVStudy pulled all the data for the WDMR-LD study from the LMS files downloaded in the program. I’ve shown the areas with interference in red.
If you just want to see the areas with coverage or within a certain field strength range, that’s easy to do in QGIS. You can download my files and experiment with QGIS before doing your own studies with TVStudy. I used a 1-kilometer cell size for the example, but TVStudy allows the use of smaller cells for higher resolution.
Additional shapefiles are available here. For specific map items, search for “tigerline shapefiles” for additional U.S. shapefiles.” I’ve found maps online for Mexican roads and urban areas, as well as world oceans and U.S. water bodies. Note that some areas will be polygons, which QGIS may display with a filled-in color. That can be changed by selecting “Simple Line” in the “Symbology” section in the layer’s properties if needed.
QGIS isn’t limited to displaying geographic and TVStudy data. If data is available as a .csv file with coordinates, it can be displayed. Potential applications include mapping towers, microwave paths, etc., once the data is in .csv format. The “Processing Toolbox” allows counting the population covered in a TVStudy coverpts.shp file by county or ZIP code, for example, and outputting the data into a .csv file for analysis. I’m still finding new things I can do with it!
