DTV Reception Where the Buffalo Roam…

(March 3, 2009) TOWNER, N.D.: People across the country are being introduced to the digital cliff effect. Reports about people losing channels in the DTV transition continue to emerge, similar to one published in Ag Week describing a rancher’s experience with digital television.

“I was pretty happy with the five channels we could pull in from the antenna mounted atop the 16-foot pine corral rail nailed to a post in my backyard,” wrote Ryan Taylor of his set-up near this North Dakota community. “I hooked my new signal-converting contraption. Shazam! The reception was crystal clear. It was amazing reception, and even more amazing was the fact that now I had only one channel. One darn clear, but lonely, channel.”

Taylor wrote that there was no cable available where he lived, and that he had “never broke down and spent the little net income we earn on a satellite dish and its monthly entertainment ransom.”

Now, the Taylor household can get just one PBS channel. No more local news or weather.

“It looks like this will be our family’s opportunity to make good on the old resolution to watch less TV and read more books and newspapers,” he wrote. “Thanks to all the advances in television technology, we’re one family who’ll spend less time in front of it.”