Jim Rossman: Metal roof doesn’t mean you can’t receive OTA channels

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This week I had an email exchange with a reader who wants to cut the cord and was wondering how they could watch their local channels.

I was all ready to mention putting up an antenna, but he added, “Over-the-air will not work in our case because of a metal roof.”

So I pivoted to talking about which streaming services offer local channels.

Hulu+Live, YouTube TV, DirecTV Stream and Sling all offer some local channels.

DirecTV Stream and YouTube TV offer the most local channels in Dallas, where I live. They are also the only two that offer local PBS channels.

Sling is the cheapest service, but they only offer Fox and NBC where I live.

The fact that the reader has a metal roof can be bad for antenna reception, especially for antennas located in the attic, but there are other options.

At my house I have antennas in two places. I have two outside on a pole mounted on the side of the house and one on the wall behind my TV.

I’ve had antennas in the attic before, but they didn’t work well for me and I didn’t have a metal roof.

I told my reader that he should try an indoor antenna – preferably in a window facing the broadcast towers or on an outside wall, hopefully a wall facing the direction of the towers.

Outdoors in the best place for an antenna.

One of the benefits of cord cutting is that most of our houses have coax cables running to where our TVs are. On my house there is an old DirecTV satellite dish that feeds into coax cables that run to the place in my house where my TV lives. I put my antenna on the dish mast and connected it to the existing coax. It was easy and I get good reception.

If the coax at your house doesn’t run to your TV, then you’ve got a bigger job ahead of you.

This is why I recommend trying an indoor antenna. They’re small, easy to hide behind the TV or mounted in a nearby window.

You can get indoor antennas with or without an amplifier. I’d probably opt to buy one with an amplifier, but you should try it first without the amp. You can always add it if your signals are weak.

Also, buy your antenna from a place that has a good return policy. You can always return it if it doesn’t work out.

After a few days I heard back from the reader, who said, “I bought a Mohu Leaf amplified antenna, hooked it up, scanned and received 82 channels. Excellent reception on all. I had tried this before with another antenna with poor results. The amplification probably makes for better reception.”

So don’t give up if you want to put up an antenna and snag free local broadcast channels.

If you want to see what channels are available at your house, you can go to https://rabbitears.info and put in your location. You’ll get back a list of channels and their distance and direction from your house and if you can expect them to come in clearly.