The FCC has been auctioning off parts of the over-the-air TV spectrum for almost a year now. This auction started on May 31, 2016, and is selling off airwaves that had previously been set aside for over-the-air TV stations. Now these spectrums will be allowed to be used for other purposes. (Don’t worry, your local TV station will still be free over the air.)

While the auction will end this week, we won’t find out who won and what stations will be affected until mid-April 2017. At that point the FCC will publicly name the TV stations that will be repackaged to new channel numbers for free over the air TV. We will also find out who won the spectrum and can start finding out what they want to do with it.

Once we find out what channels are affected they will have 39 months (3.25 years) to notify the public of the move to new channel numbers. The only issue many cord cutters will face is being forced to rescan for their local over-the-air TV stations.

We won’t know right away how much broadcasters received from this auction, but we do know the $10 billion reserve was met, so they will get at least $10 billion for this sale.

Source: MultiChannel News

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