TV for the ultra cheap

TV for the ultra cheap is simple, just put up an antenna and only watch what you can see for free. Some people are now watching antenna TV and supplementing it with Netflix, Amazon Prime, or something similar, and possibly spending $25 to get the lowest price streaming service to include ESPN.

But what if you can't get antenna service because of intervening hills, or apartment buildings, or you just don't want to climb on your roof.

The newest solution is now locast.org which is in only 9 cities so far, but should go nationwide soon
Philadelphia
New York
Boston
Washington DC
Baltimore
Chicago
Houston
Dallas
Denver

Locast.org is available now on all popular mobile and streaming platforms like Roku, Amazon, and your browser. The service is technically free, but they irritate you with requests for a $5 donation which you probably will want as you have to listen to the request every time you change a channel.

Is it legal? Well it is exploiting a loophole in FAA regulations that applies to non-profit organization. Their tactic is to bug people into making the $5 a month donation. As we all know some executives of non-profits can make decent salaries. So far it has not been challenged.

Locast.org is a “digital translator,” meaning that Locast.org operates just like a traditional broadcast translator service, except instead of using an over-the-air signal to boost a broadcaster’s reach, we stream the signal over the Internet to consumers located within select US cities.

Quote: Locast

Ever since the dawn of TV broadcasting in the mid-20th Century, non-profit organizations have provided “translator” TV stations as a public service. Where a primary broadcaster cannot reach a receiver with a strong enough signal, the translator amplifies that signal with another transmitter, allowing consumers who otherwise could not get the over-the-air signal to receive important programming, including local news, weather and of course, sports. Locast.org provides the same public service, except instead of an over-the-air signal transmitter, we provide the local broadcast signal via online streaming.

The locast.org is now in 13 cities so far,including the top 9 markets in the USA.

AT&T just made a contribution of $500,000 to the tax free organization in a very self serving move. Now if AT&T having a fight over rebroadcast fees with local broadcast stations for Dish TV, they can refuse to pay the requested fees, and tell their customers to watch broadcast stations using locast.

Just because locast is a non-profit they are not exempt from lawsuits, and this AT&T contribution may finally bring about the expected lawsuit.