Well, my wife and I live in the boonies and I have what might be termed "fringe TV".  We don't watch a lot of TV; perhaps a few evening shows (mostly CBS, Fox and PBS), news in the morning and noon, and Fox 7 News at 9:00 pm.  We can survive on very few stations and refuse to get cable or satellite.  We have been watching DTV from Austin for over a year with an HDTV set. 

Fringe TV is very interesting.  We are entering a period in which weather conditions can cause TV signals to fade.  With DTV a signal loss results in a distorted frozen frame which in itself can be mesmerizing.  This process could eventually evolve a whole new artform.  It reminds us of the early days of TV where everyone sat around the TV and watched the test pattern until shows started around noon.

Anyway, we thought we were ready for the DTV conversion.  Comes the big day and we scan for channels knowing that Fox 7 was changing frequency.  There was no signal.  We were getting 18, 36, 42 and 54 from Austin.  We changed the antenna direction and actually got Fox 4 from Dallas and Fox 26 from Houston on a few tries (more to do again with atmospherics).  Alas there was no Fox 7.  We are tired of scanning and convinced that Fox 7 is kaput ( a technical term).

I've got to wonder if the station engineer at Fox 7 waited until the conversion date to tell everyone it would be a month before Fox 7 would be at full power.  I wonder if the marketing guy got the memo. 

Please keep us posted online when Fox 7 is at full power.  We miss the news, weather and sports gang.