Television Broadcast Coverage

An extensive field survey has been made of the three television transmitters in the New York City territory. The survey consisted of observations of many receivers permanently installed in the metropolitan area and of observations made with special receiving equipment mounted aboard the cruiser Hurricane II. Continuous recordings of field strength and still photographs have been made. This paper deals extensively with the multipath problem in television broadcasting which causes multiple patterns in the received picture. Extensive use is made of photographs and diagrams illustrating the appearance of these patterns and explaining the causes of these various types of "ghosts." The findings of this survey definitely lead to the conclusions that the lower-frequency channels provide the least multipath interference in metropolitan territory such as New York City. Reasonably good reception is found from all three New York stations at distances beyond five miles up to the distances where signal level becomes too low for satisfactory receiver operation. Photographs are used to exhibit the quality of reception and types of programs now current in good locations around New York City.