Here in the Minneapolis area, back in the early 80's, we had 17, 23, 29, and 41. 17 was PBS. As I remember, 23 & 29 had some good stuff. 41 was up in St Cloud and also had good programming, but it was at a distance and was weak here. But with analog, weak was still ok with patience. Weak digital today? Forget it. I sometimes have problems getting a UHF station from about 15 miles away putting out several hundred kW. Why? Who knows... I rarely watch TV these days, its primarily radio. That's where the action is.
Then there was ch 14... which was scrambled HBO from a tower downtown Mpls (as I recall). I think very early on it was not scrambled (1980 or 1981), then went scrambled and it that was that. I had read about a descrambler, but never pursued it.
My how the times have changed.
I did find this interesting from the website:
Lee's proposal would have moved FM up to 342-362 MHz, just as it was finally recovering from having been moved from 42-46 MHz to 88-108 MHz less than a decade earlier.
I have a couple of radios with 42-46 and 88-108, but had never heard of the 342-362 MHz proposal.
I'd propose to extend the current FM band down to 65 MHz.. A 65-108 MHz FM band would be great, as it would give a lot more room which also included OIRT & Japan.
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