Television viewers in the Boulder and Basin areas may have noticed changes to their channel lineup over the past few months. In July, technical changes made by the NBC affiliate in Missoula caused the loss of the 6.x channel range for local residents.
“There wasn’t really any warning,” Rick Haasakker of Boulder TV told The Monitor. “We knew they had plans to make the changes, but we didn’t know when. It just sort of happened unexpectedly in July during the Olympics.” Boulder TV is a private organization that supplies over-the-air television services to Boulder and Basin.
Haasakker explained that the Missoula station, KECI, moved its signal from VHF channel 6 frequency to UHF channel 20. This change meant that the antennas Boulder TV uses to receive and relay over-the-air (OTA) channels no longer could receive the signals. Haasakker said that attempts to use UHF antennas to receive the signals were unsuccessful.
“We pick up the signal from a little satellite relay in Butte,” Haasakker said. “But the main signal originates in Missoula. So we are really at their mercy.”
Haasakker said he is working on alternatives to regain the 6.x NBC channel lineup. Hed hopes to shift from a OTA signal capture to an internet supply line. But initial investigations into this method indicated that tens of thousands of dollars in new equipment would be needed to convert to digital.
So Haasakker is working with Blackfoot Communications, an internet service provider, to use a dedicated internet circuit that already exists between Missoula to Boulder. He says he is currently negotiating with Blackfoot on bandwidth and priority over the lines. “It takes about 25-30MB to carry a television signal over the internet,” he said.
Haasakker said he is hoping to have the channel 6.x lineup back on the air before the end of the year. He noted that a shift to a digital carrier could also improve television reception in Basin, which also lost the channel 6 range this summer.
“We’re hoping that we can get this all going soon, because we know there will be more changes like this coming next year,” Haasakker said. “We just don’t know when.”
