February 9, 2026
Static, storms & spicy takes
History of UHF Television: TV Above Channel 13 (2024)
Commenters feud over ‘unreceivable’ channels as storms, dictators, and sea TV crash the party
TLDR: A refreshed site charts the rise and fall of UHF TV stations that vanished, complete with articles and galleries. Commenters turn it into a myth-busting brawl over whether higher channels were hard to get, swapping global memories of dictatorships, rough weather, and surprise cross-border signals—history meets hot takes.
A nostalgia-fueled website reviving the epic saga of UHF TV—those channels above 13 and the stations that went dark—just lit up the comments section. The site traces a 1977 list, revamped in 2011 and 2014, into a full-on archive with Channels, Articles, and rebuilt Galleries, crediting World Radio History for the receipts. But the real show? The crowd’s spicy debate over whether “almost no one could receive” those higher channels.
One camp is calling myth: a top commenter snaps that in cities, “everyone could receive them,” while rural folks in Indiana had only UHF. Others roll in with globe-trotting TV war stories. A Spaniard recalls life under one-channel rule—“TVE, but from a dictatorship”—with a second, artsy channel on a different band that needed new gear. UK commenters bring the chaos: Scotland’s ocean winds literally ripped VHF aerials off roofs, pushing families to UHF, while a Dutch neighbor gleefully admits snagging the BBC across the North Sea when the weather was just right.
The memes wrote themselves: “Weather is the final boss,” “antenna leg day,” and “BBC on vacation to Holland.” It’s part history lesson, part weather report, and part urban-legend smackdown—exactly the kind of drama this archive was built to stir up, as it preserves the lost logos, test patterns, and TV ghosts of yesteryear.
Key Points
- •The site documents analog UHF television stations that went dark, excluding most stations still on-air.
- •Its origins trace to Clarke Ingram’s 1999 adaptation of Mike Dorner Jr.’s 1977 article from VHF-UHF Digest.
- •K.M. Richards conducted comprehensive reviews in 2011 and 2014, creating the verified “Channels” section.
- •The site comprises Channels, Articles, and Galleries; the galleries were lost during an outage and are being reconstructed.
- •World Radio History provides archival resources and hosts the site; several researchers and reference books supported content development.