Free-To-Air TV Stations To Go Dark During Spectrum Repack

By VICTORIA PRAY

Moapa Valley Progress

The Moapa Valley Television Maintenance District (MVTVD) will turn off five of their eleven frequencies on Wednesday, October 10 at midnight. Those frequencies air channels/programming to Moapa Valley residents receiving the television signal through an antenna.

The frequencies are being turned off to convert them frequencies into a lower broadcast portion of the spectrum. The temporary outage will make twenty television channels including BYU, KSL, and CW Network temporarily unavailable.

In 2016, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required all television stations across the United States to “free up” a part of the broadcast spectrum from channels 38 up into channel 68. The FCC then auctioned off these channel frequencies in order to provide revenues the federal government. Various companies won the bids. T-mobile won the bids for the frequencies in our southern Nevada area.

As a result, MVTVD was forced to make changes in their programing. It also necessitated the purchase of new equipment to support the lower broadband.

The shut-off date for these frequencies is mandated by T-mobile and the FCC.
“The district has been working over the past couple of years to assure we will have the best equipment to provide the residents with quality television,” said MVTVD board member Daniel Pray. “We have kept the channels for as long as we could. Now that the deadline is here, we need to turn off the five frequencies for a few weeks to move them to the lower broadcast spectrum.”

As this conversion takes place, district officials will create a new channel lineup with many of the existing channels returning that the community is accustomed to receiving.
“Don’t worry, because for the past two years, the MVTVD has been doing the engineering to find lower frequencies in the broadcast spectrum for us to be able to turn those channels back on in about a month,” said Pray.

A new channel lineup will be posted after the conversion on MVTVD website: www.mvtvd.com/; on their facebook page, in the Moapa Valley Progress, and on the scrolling channel.