What Is Over-The-Air (OTA) TV? | CableTV.com

Recent history of OTA TV

Back in 2009, the FCC mandated that the country switch from analog to digital television. At the beginning of that year, over 10% of households1 in the US had TVs that weren’t ready to support the new digital format.

When the big day came, about a quarter of those households had decided to upgrade to cable or satellite television while the rest opted for a digital converter box.

After that, a lot of us forgot about the way we used to watch our favorite shows. But just because our rabbit-ear antennas went away doesn’t mean that local television did.

It’s still all around us, being broadcast over the air from local stations. As opposed to satellite, cable, or fiber TV, this television service is called broadcast TV or over-the-air TV.