Why Is There No Channel 37 in the United States?

There are more than 1000 television stations in the United States including pay-TV. Every channel is used to telecast a variety of programs. But for some reason ‘channel 37’ doesn’t exist. Americans can’t find channel 37 on television. Nothing appears. Want to learn more about channel 37 news and US TV channel frequencies? Read on to find out why channel 37 didn’t appear on television.

Channel 37 is known as a terminated ultra-high frequency (UHF) television broadcasting channel in the United States, Mexico, Canada and some other European countries. The frequency range allotted for this channel is necessary for radio astronomy, hence this channel is not authorized.

Why Isn’t There a Channel 37?

Channel 37’s UHF frequencies were occupied by many countries. This band is most important to radio astronomy as it permits observation in the area of the spectrum in between allocated frequencies near 410 MHz and 1.4 GHz. The region unused or reserved may vary from country to country, region to region. For example, British isles and the EU may have slightly different reserved frequency regions. In 1952, the US Federal Communications Commission launched the television system to use UHF. According to The History of UHF Television, On July 11, 1952, the first UHF applications were permitted which is a site made for the higher-frequency television offerings.

The Radio Telescope That Became a Problem for the Television Industry

The analogue television sets never included channel 37 because scientists simply required the channel for other reasons. Radio telescope covers a 600 mile radius of Danville in Illinois including Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Toronto, Pittsburgh and Washington, DC .The entire length of the Mississippi river fits into the radius. It means 600 miles radius covers the entire East Coast except for Florida and the North East.

It is a 400-foot wide radio telescope that operates with the 610 MHz frequency. It was known as a monster of astronomy during that time. It operates 12 to 16 hours every day. Therefore, scientists from the University of Illinois tried their best to keep it secret. The study that led them to create radio telescopes happened accidentally but taught us more information about the universe than what we learned with an optical telescope.radio engineer and Bell laboratories employee Karl Jansky tried to find the source of static that interrupted radio waves. He discovered that it contained an extraterrestrial source, especially in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy. 

Fortunately, scientists received support from the global community for accessing this telescope. Hence, a meeting of the International Telecommunication Union was arranged in 1959 to talk about the series of frequencies that were essentials for various scientific and technical uses; one of them was channel 37. The University of Illinois wanted to protect its radio telescope investment. Hence it approached the FCC (The Federal Communications Commission )after the ITC meeting in the 1960s and urged that channel 37 be allocated only for radio telescopes.