[wa2ise]

In the latest issue of Sky and Telescope there was a short mention of a TV station located in Paterson NJ to be put on channel 37. But the radio astronomy community convinced the FCC to keep channel 37 unoccupied, as some interesting frequencies in that channel are observed by radio astronomers. Natural hydrogen spectral radiation or such. Extremely weak signal work, such that a TV station on ch 37 could leak enough signal over the horizon via the ionosphere or tropo, or maybe enough of a megawatt transmission bouncing off the Moon could be enough to jam the radio astronomy dish receiver. The radio astronomers were located in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia (middle of nowhere is by choice, less RFI).

Paterson NJ had analog TV channels, 41 and 47, both carrying Spanish language programming. I suppose one of these was the channel 37 allocation.