Why are television networks differently numbered in different states?
In: 1
At one point, the goal was to make sure there was no (or very limited) interference.
If City A has channel 3, then city B, which is really close to A would not want channel 3 as well. There would be too much interference from the first station.
So it was important to find an available frequency with no interference. A channel may go out of business, but a station doesn’t want to change their channel number, so there might not be interference today, but the decision was made 20 years ago when different channels existed.
It’s not an issue today, as with digital TV, a station can broadcast on a different frequency. So today, there is a virtual channel, and an RF Chanel. When I turn on virtual channel 3.1, my TV might know that 3.1 is actually on RF Channel 9. So the antenna is searching for that frequency.
Adding to the other answer, TV channel numbers were a simplified way of saying which frequency they had, similar to radio frequencies. So, instead of saying that KCTV was at 76 to 82 MHz, they defined that frequency as “channel 5”, and televisors were made to “translate” the channel number to the actual frequency.
[FM radios have a similar system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting_in_the_United_States#FM_radio_channel_assignments_in_the_U.S.), but nobody say, for instance, that KABG (98.5 MHz) in Albuquerque is at Channel 253.
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