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Comment by gtk40 | Hacker News Reader

Same thing with Charter for me. They constantly try to sell me a $7/month addon that will give access to over-the-air channels through cable. I got that with a >$10 HD antenna, so I'm not sure what the value would be. (and I've barely used that...)

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I've been trying to (unsuccessfully) research why OTA broadcasts of channels exist in the first place. Why do/would these networks provide their service for free? I thought transmissions were to be encrypted.

Am I missing something?

Ads.

from what i understand OTA channels are free because the public airwaves are a public utility and they are funded by the ads they sell. cable just took this model and decided to reverse the costs from the ad generators to the consumers.

My gut thought is to look at it like radio. Radio won't go away because it only has 1 channel (AM) because it is a broadcast service. No infrastructure between the signal and you. Emergency services for example. More than that though TV and radio OTA broadcasts are something that should continue, there is 0 config, you just tune into the frequency and you get the message.

In the UK we have several free OTA channels. The commercial ones are funded mainly by advertising and by being available to all they can offer potentially more eyeballs to advertisers.

They are not free, they still make money from commercials. Same as radio. In some countries, there are public broadcast channels that don't display commercials, those you pay through tax.

With cable and satellite they often put their own commercials on top of the channel's so public broadcasting channels make less money that way.

They're still ad supported, and their infrastructure costs are much smaller than cable. (Eg, no plant of copper and fibre run across cities. Just some leased tower space, etc)

So they can charge you another $8/month for a cable box! (Not kidding, that's what Cox did to me)

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