The repack auction is over, according to TV Technology. I found that the CBS channel in my area on channel 19 (VHF 10) is staying on that channel (which surprised me, as I thought they would have requested a move to a UHF channel), but the station's licensee, Raycom Media, has instead requested an immediate increase in ERP transmitter power. Whether this will improve reception of the station to the east of Cleveland (especially in the "dead zone" east of the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, where the station is received poorly or not at all), however, remains to be seen.
BTW, Cleveland is not the only city to have a TV station on a VHF DTV channel. There are several other cities in other parts of the US as well that have at least one station still on a VHF DTV channel after the transition, and which probably have the same reception problems Cleveland's channel 19 (DTV 10) has had since the digital transition.
Why these areas' TV stations have been assigned VHF DTV channels is far beyond me. It makes no sense, especially in Cleveland, where the CBS station is now on a VHF DTV channel that doesn't reach half the station's coverage area. CBS is America's most-watched TV network, after all (they announce this every chance they get (!)), so it makes no sense for any of its local affiliates not to reach
all, as in every square mile, of their cities/areas of license; in fact, the Cleveland station is probably losing advertising revenue left and right because of the huge dead zone east of town.
Channel 19 in Cleveland has lost fully half its viewing audience due to its owner's wrong-headed decision to put its DTV signal on VHF channel 10, instead of moving to another UHF channel, as they should have done in the first place. Other cities may have been able to get away with putting their stations on VHF DTV channels without losing viewers, but this does not work well in northeastern Ohio due to the area's geography and the fact that most of the station's signal on channel 10 goes over Lake Erie, rather than being beamed to the east; another problem is co-channel interference six months of the year with channel 10 in Ontario, Canada, sixty miles directly across Lake Erie.
I thought (in fact, I was sure) Raycom Media would have seen this problem immediately, and moved its Cleveland station to a UHF channel right from the beginning; if they had, this co-channel and reception problems monkey business would never have become an issue. The reason they did not do this may be because Raycom's technical staff did not take Cleveland's proximity to Ontario, Canada into account when they were trying to find a suitable DTV channel. They could have left 19's DTV signal on channel 19 instead of moving it (a technique known as "flash-cutting"), as a TV station in Akron, Ohio did shortly after the DTV transition.
I don't know. Maybe Raycom figures the area east of Cleveland, for whatever reason they may have, is not worth the trouble to put a decent signal into.
I would remind these people, if I could, that their station happens to be affiliated with a television network (CBS) which is presently America's most-watched television network, and that they absolutely cannot afford to lose viewers; no commercial TV station can.
Sheeesh. If they (Raycom Media) do not seem to care that their Cleveland station does not reach all of northeastern Ohio since the digital transition, perhaps, IMHO, they should sell it to a media group that does.
While there are ways available to viewers east of town to get around this problem, such as cable, satellite or streaming video, to name but three, the licensee and/or owners of channel 19 absolutely cannot ignore the over-the-air reception difficulties in Cleveland's suburbs and outlying areas east of the city. There are many people who cannot afford cable or satellite, some people cannot, for whatever reason, put up outdoor TV antennas, and the popular Roku player's cable app (in my area the Spectrum app) will not receive an area's local TV channels without the account holder having at least a cable account (the cable need not be physically connected to the TV); this is a function of their billing system, and is necessary so the cable operator can pay for the privilege of having local TV channels available via the application.