For more than ten years, Denver’s leading broadcasters have worked with local officials, neighbors and the federal government to make good on a plan to ultimately take down four existing towers and replace them with a single tower that is shorter than the tallest tower it replaces for Digital TV.

Public Safety

Broadcast television stations play a significant role in homeland security and public safety. This has become even more apparent in the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. When cable and satellite don’t work, free over-the-air broadcast television is often the first and only source for news and information. Local residents depend upon the stations for emergency news during extreme weather events and other emergencies.

Local stations are an integral of the Federal and state governments Emergency Alert System (EAS). Local television stations play a similar role in Amber Alerts which notifies the public of the abduction of a child so the public may assist in finding the child as quickly as possible.

The television stations have partnered with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, which oversees homeland security for the state, to create a media and command center to ensure efficient dissemination of emergency information during a crisis.

The federal plan for implementing Digital Television includes reallocating some of the frequencies returned to the FCC by the stations at the end of the transition period. These frequencies will be allocated for use by homeland security and local first responders. For the first time, emergency services will utilize the same frequencies across the country. The lack of a common band of frequencies has presented problems not just in national disasters but local ones as well. In most metropolitan areas, the various first responder agencies do not utilize interoperable communication systems. The rest of the frequencies will be sold, in part to provide funding to first responders to purchase new communications equipment.