Cord cutters beware, either rescan, or lose local stations Friday

If you are a cord cutter and use an over the air antenna to watch TV, you might need to do a bit of work to find some local stations come Friday morning.

The reason is the Federal Communications Commission refers to this as the “TV Repack” which is condensing the frequencies that TV stations use into a smaller bundle says WHYY’s Chief Engineer Thad Kirk.

“This is so that higher frequencies can be used for cell phones and other functions.”  They include faster high speed wireless internet for your phone and tablet.

So beginning on Friday morning Kirk says you need to rescan your TV by going into the setup menu and hitting search or rescan ONLY if you are using an antenna, not satellite or cable.

“A rescan will find the channels on the new frequencies and everything will be displayed as they expect on their television.”

Cord-cutters are those who have shunned the traditional cable television and opted for over the air (OTA) reception of the traditional networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC and others.  They use internet to stream services such as HGTV or ESPN.

Kirk stresses the even people with little technical experience should be able to successfully complete a rescan of each of their televisions in their home.

“People will have to go into the setup menu in their television, and select either autoscan or rescan and the TV will go through it’s process and find the frequency assigned to the channels.”

This part of the repack will impact Channels 3, 10, and 29 among other seen over the air in the region. WHYY’s TV station Channel 12 won’t be moving until next year when another rescan will be necessary.