The Rabbit Ears Website

Above is the logo of a website that I found while searching for a list of TV stations. In another article, I refer to this website as a source for some of the article’s content.

Rabbit Ears is a website with current up-to-date information about virtually every digital television station in the United States. The webmaster is a new friend of mine named Trip, and a fellow Amateur Radio operator, (KJ4IEA). He has put a great time and effort into building the vast listings of TV stations, and there are other areas of interest to digital TV broadcasting on his site also.

When you first go to the Rabbit ears site, the home page has some notes and info from Trip about updates and changes for various TV stations, or other personal messages.

At the top of the page is a row of 8 tabs to 29 pages of TV broadcast info, and lists galore. They are all very easy to navigate and self-explanatory when you get to them.

My favorite is the Station listings and info. You can find this by going to the “LISTINGS” tab, then clicking on the “WEB LISTINGS” tab on the drop down menu. This takes you to a page titled “Digital TV Market Listings”. You will find a long list of station markets. A market is a specific city or region with stations that all broadcast just to that area. The markets are listed by rank, meaning the largest populated, to the smallest populated areas.

For example, I live within the Harrisburg, PA market which serves Harrisburg, Lancaster, Lebanon, and York PA region and several counties. The Harrisburg PA market is ranked as the 44th largest populated area for broadcasting stations to reach.

If you scroll down the page to number 44, you will see my market. Or scroll down and look for the city or region that you live in. When you find it, click on it. A drop down window will open showing a list of the TV stations that serve your market. Clicking on any of the station call letters will open another drop down window giving more details about that station. Including their main channel number, and any subchannels, the programming source of the channels and subchannels, the video resolution, and the audio format.

Just below the channel numbers are 2 links. One is labeled “Technical Data and Screencaps”. Click on it and the window drops down to show a vast amount of information about the stations power, antenna gain and tower height with maps of the location of the transmitter showing transmitting patterns and coverage areas, station update applications, FCC licensing info, screen dimensions, aspect ratios, digital audio bitrates….and so much more. And this site does this for over 1,900 digital TV stations nationwide.

Under the “TOOLS” tab, you can use “TV QUERY” to locate station by call sign, location, channel number…etc. Or use “STATISTICS” to see a list of station statistics, like how many of what, by channel, state…etc. There are 8 tabs with 29 page choices, loaded with lists, info, and tech stuff.

The Rabbit Ears website is free to all visitors 24/7. You can also register as a site member for free. Membership gives you a control center to send emails to your email address about updates and changes. But you can chose which stations or markets you want to receive updates about.

But as with all websites, it is not free to the owner. It costs money to maintain and update the site. My friend Trip pays for this from his pocket and a couple of advertisers on the site. Anyone who wishes to donate to help defray the costs to Trip, can do so by following the detailed instructions in the “Advertising Reminder” message box on the Rabbit Ears home page. You can take an ad for one month or longer. The ad can be your name supports Rabbit Ears, hams can use a QSL card to advertise themselves, or a link to your personal website. Advertise your business, or a product you sell. Or leave it blank just for support.

Visit the Rabbit Ears website anytime by clicking on the Rabbit Ears link under their logo at the top of this article.

 

73, de K3DAV