Don’t panic – you just need to Rescan…
Just for fun, let’s take a short little trip with our imaginations into a land called, Rescan. How do you get to this land? Well… if you’re a “cord cutter” – someone that receives your local broadcasts via an antenna – let’s just say you wake up one day and turn on your TV and some, or many, of your channels aren’t there for you to watch. Your first thought is they are off the air since you know they have been off often recently. You decide not to do anything because you know they will be back on the air sooner or later so you continue to make the coffee, pour a cup for yourself, grab a donut or cinnamon roll and settle in for a news-less morning and figure you’ll catch up later.
After your quiet breakfast, you get ready and head off to your job, appointments or whatever you have on your schedule, planned or unplanned. Throughout the day, you wonder why those channels are missing or how long the stations will be off air this time but go about your day anyway. Afterall, this isn’t the first time this has happened over the last several weeks or months.
You work all day, expecting to be able to watch TV when you get home. So, you get home and everything is still the same, your favorite channels are still missing. You wonder what is going on so you begin to get suspicious your antenna may be the problem. You take a quick look at your antenna and everything seems to be okay, so you decide it might be a good idea to have your antenna person take a look at it the next day.
In the meantime, you turn to Netflix and decide to make a movie night of it. While you’re bringing up you account the thought hits you to check if the local broadcast stations have messages on their websites about the loss of signals. Sure enough, the information jumps right out at you. The headline states they have changed their frequencies. You stop before moving on further and wonder WHY would they do that and does it mean you need new equipment or even a new TV? Fortunately, you read a little further and find you only need to RESCAN your TV to regain the reception of their programming. A little further in their paragraphs, you find they have general information telling you how to rescan your TVs. You follow their instructions and regain your channels, breathe a sigh of relief and start watching your favorite off air channels again…
And that my friend is how you entered the land of Rescan…
Rescan… This may be a foreign term to some of you, especially if you’re not using an antenna to receive your local broadcast stations. If you don’t use an antenna to receive your local broadcast signals and receive them through a satellite or Cable provider, you won’t need to do anything because it will be done for you. But, IF YOU USE AN ANTENNA, get ready to rescan your TV or Off-Air converter because it is happening soon. Why is this happening? Is this similar to when the FCC mandated the change of broadcast signals changing to Digital?
The reason for this is because of the FCC mandated repack, or realignment, of some frequencies to make room to accommodate 5G signals and other devices in the near and distant future. They have already sold the frequencies and are in the process of implementing the transition.
This is not new news. It has been under way for several years now. It just hasn’t been put into action until last year. It is proceeding according to the FCC plan and taking place in phases. At the present we are in phase three and soon to enter phase four. Your local broadcasters are following the FCC mandated repack phases and the timeframe applies to some differently than others.
I want you to be informed but I won’t go into a long discussion here simply because there is plenty of information available online. I will give you a couple of websites to check out, though and you should gain a better understanding even if you are already familiar with what’s going on. A few of those websites are:
https://www.TVAnswers.org
https://www.nab.org/repacking
https://www.antennaweb.org
There are plenty more. If you check out one or some of these sites, you will likely discover several more you will want to check out, too.
The important things to remember during the next few months, (at least in the Fort Myers/Naples DMA) is to be patient and don’t panic… YOU JUST NEED TO RESCAN… You may have to do it several times over the coming months but understand, “this too shall pass” and things will get back to normal… eventually…
See ya next time…
All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer
© February 27, 2020 – all rights reserved
Rusty Norman, The Norman TV Vantage, Norman-TV.com
All audio productions by www.podcastnorm.com and PodCastNorm Productions
All music used is Two Buck Themes by Mike Stewart unless otherwise stated
