As of 6-13-09, I can receive many analog stations in Chicago!

[drh4683]

I am shocked with what I am seeing. Last night at 11:59:59, I watched channel 26, WCIU go off the air. It was the only station that did a "tribute" to their analog station. They had a party in the transmitter room at the sears tower with all the engineers and TV station staff. In the last 15 minutes of analog, they did a tour of the tranmitter room, showing the new and the old equipment and also discussed the history of the TV station and interviewed a few of the early station workers and what they did. I thought it was really great that they did that. I was able to record it, but lost the first 3 or so minutes as I didn't expect any TV station to do such a thing. They then did a countdown like a new years eve party and then shut the transmitter off and into snow it went.

At that time, channel 26 (chicagos first UHF Station) was the very last remaining analog transmitter to go out. Channel 32, WFLD is currently on, but not in any normal format. Its a 24 hour how-to program about the digital switchover and how to hook up your dtv box etc.

I went up into the attic today to hook up my good RCA 25db antenna amp, which I took out of service about 1 year ago as I thought it was causing problems in my reception. It did however do an excellent job of amplifing weak stations.

To my amazement, I can still receive numerous analog stations over the air! I kid you not, I am currently receiving 11 analog stations! Some of which I have never seen before. Only one is on VHF, and thats channel 6, which has never been a "chicago" TV channel.

I am receiving WLFM-TV channel 6. Its a smooth jazz music radio station broadcasting on TV and its nothing more than a slide show of different buildings in chicago while playing the music. Then a station ID appears indicating "WLFM-CA channel 6 and 87.7FM smooth jazz".

Next station is channel 23, which is WCIU!!! WCIU was 26, but weigel broadcasting owns channels 23, WWME, channel 26, WCIU, and channel 48, WMEU. They replaced WWME with WCIU on channel 23, coming in crystal clear. I have no idea when this happened as all the weigel stations were off after midnight.

Next station was on channel 24, some totally unknown broadcast at the moment. Looked like some kind of local station, but very weak.

Next in line I could tune in a channel 25, which was a home shopping network channel. I know this is a low powered station that serves chicago and near suburbs.

Channel 31 was the next to be tuned, very distant and weak broadcast. Sound was clear, picture could be made out but poor horizontal sync.

Channel 32, WFLD as mentioned before is a 24 hour DTV conversion station

Channel 34, WEDE, broadcast off the sears tower as indicated in the vertical blanking bar. Its a religious station, comes in quite well.

Channel 41, another clear analog signal that is not been identified yet

Channel 42, another clear signal that I cannot identify

Channel 48, WMEU as previously mentioned, a wiegel station, broadcasting its original content, 24 hour vintage TV shows (yes!)

Last is channel 61, some unidentifed spanish station.

Perhaps I can receive more stations if I change direction of my antenna, but as of now, these stations all appear to be originating in chicago or near by suburbs.

Its not totally over just yet in chicagoland. I'm curious how long this will continue. What suprises me is that WCIU went back on the air but took the place of channel 23.

I'm going to do some reading up on whats going on and find out what these other stations are. Im curious if anyone else has witnessed some of their major TV stations go back on the air like WCIU and WMEU just did!