Broadcasting in the United States: Difference between revisions
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* VHF TV covers channels 2 to 13. Channel 1 was lost to two-way land mobile radio by 1948. As all full-service stations were forced digital-only by mid-2009, the low VHF channels are now largely vacant.
* UHF TV covers channels 14 to 36. It's been losing spectrum to mobile telephony for years. Channels 70-83 were lost in 1983, followed by channels 52-69 at the end of the digital transition. A forced "repack" is expected to push the rest of the broadcasters out of the channel 38-51 range by 2021. With channel 37 reserved for radio astronomy, the low-UHF band is getting very crowded.
* Shortwave radio is mostly unused for broadcasting in the United States. What stations do exist are religious (often run by a new "prophet") or operated by fringe groups. You can find official time signal broadcasts there too, among other signals; really cool alarm and digital clocks can set themselves to these signals. The US government does operate news stations like Voice of America to reach an audience overseas, along with the occasional bit of propaganda aimed at Cuba, communist China or (historically) the former Soviet bloc.
== Standards and Regulation ==
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