William Schreiber is note engineer and is now a retiree professor of electrical engineer at MIT)
wfs@mit.edu 617 491 3638 fax 617 253 7302
Several years ago, in writing a report for the EU on the state of TV in the US, I looked up the statistics of TV use. It turns out that well over half the TV receivers are on antennas. This is because the average number of sets per home is nearly three, while the average number of cable boxes in cable homes is not much more than one. I did not find any good numbers on the percentage of antennas that were indoor vs the percent outdoor, but I would be very surprised if the outdoor antennas were a very large portion of all the antennas.
Therefore, even if the percentage of homes on cable is about 65, it is not correct to state that only 35% of recvrs use antennas. In my opinion (I am not a broadcaster, of course) a TV system that cannot operate with indoor antennas is simply impractical.
William F. Schreiber
