Getting good TV reception in isolated rural areas can be a difficult challenge. Cable TV is not an option and satellite TV can be very expensive. A free rural TV system is now adding three more channels for its rural customers.
The Valley Metropolitan Recreation District has TV rebroadcasting towers atop a mesa east of Hoehne on the Montoya ranch. Its service has now been upgraded from 30 watts to 100 watts, and three high-definition TV channels will be available to those with digitally capable TVs. The service also has a new 360-degree
antenna, allowing its signal to reach a wider area...
...Programming from Fox, CBS and RFD-TV (a channel devoted to rural issues, concerns, and interests) will now be available to rural customers. Lester Mundy is the treasurer of the non-profit recreation district. He said the district began broadcasting from towers on the mesa in the mid-1960s. A rancher started the district with the idea of providing free TV service to rural customers. A five-member board helps administer the district, but engineers must be brought in to handle the many recent technical upgrades in service. The district is required to get a new rebroadcasting license from the
FCC every five years, though Mundy said there have been so many recent upgrades that the district has had to apply for a new license with each upgrade in service.
“In our category where we did have an analog station, we put that on digital and now on that same wavelength, we get four different channels. It’s letting us increase what we’re doing by quite a bit,” Mundy said.