Ever wonder how many television stations — of all sorts — are on the air in the United States?
The FCC’s Media Bureau last month published a count of broadcast stations as of March 31. The bureau broke the universe down into several sub-categories, including commercial, educational, UHF, VHF, full power and LPTV, as well as translators and repeaters.
According to the bureau, there are 1783 VHF and UHF full-power commercial and educational stations, broken down as: 1020 UHF commercial TV stations; 373 VHF commercial TV stations; 283 UHF educational TV stations and 107 VHF educational TV stations.
A total of 534 Class A stations are on the air, 449 of which are UHF and 85 VHF. There are 4451 TV translators on-air, with 3048 being UHF translators and 1403 being VHF. There are also 2411 LPTV stations on air, with 1889 being UHF and 522 being VHF.
The bureau also supplied a count for AM and FM stations, FM translators and boosters, and low-power FM stations. Taken together, as of March 31, there were 30,666 broadcast stations on-air, the bureau figures showed.