Tl;dr at the bottom (sorry)

That is a good question. Now I genuinely don’t know how it works in bigger / more dense metro areas but in gods cuntry anyway the transmitters are often 25+ miles away and don’t necessarily contain all the channels one can get. I couldn’t find an accurate or updated list of the stations I should get on any of those “free digital tv channel” websites that even list one of mine as a possibility, so it’s out there but idk where. There was a GIS from NASA I believe that shows all the various public and private/commercial comms towers and such (I’ll see if I can find it again) that had promise, sad allusion unintended, but I couldn’t get it to load on my phone and can’t look at a desktop so soon in the weekend, lulul.

I also read something about close frequency signals having to be physically separated to avoid interference which was depending on power output I believe (yayyy electromagnetic equations).

Additionally also, I can’t remember which channel since it’s been years since summer, but one of mine (and all its subchannels) would always lag a bit on a hot sunny day but would do fantastically in the rain. The other one was more or less the opposite. I’ve since repositioned it and have had clear picture/audio almost constantly that I’ve noticed.

TL;dr:

I’m pretty sure they’re on entirely separate towers based on maps and prior reception differences.

I appreciate your validation that this appears to be a content feed issue and not likely a reception issue. Too many possibilities.

The only addition I have is that the two channels originate from different transmitters as far as I can tell. That adds to how strange it was for both 13.1 and 46.1 being missing content at the same time, while their respective affiliates were fine.

I hope to find public outage or feedback reports for broadcast stations, maybe a pattern is evident somewhere?

Thank you for checking! Knowing it was just reruns on the Big Three for those lacking a social life is a certain flavor of relief.

Assuming it was a local “grayout” on the two subchannels coming from different transmitters, could it be a limited testing of the waters for possible public response? OTA watchers would probably report a lack of feed less than someone who subscribes to a wired (cable, internet) service because one assumes OTA has less reliable reception, and it’s also free. But in this case, the other subchannels being on air tells me it’s not a typical reception issue.

It’s easy to handwave this away as an abberation, but it’s still disconcerting.

On both channels? Coming from different broadcast towers? At the same time?

Everyone should keep in mind: Besides the darkened tone of the world seeping into nearly everything, this place is probably crawling with shit-stirrers of a slightly subtler flavor than your typical obnoxious troll.

This effect might be from lemmy users in general hating everything about the world right now, or it might be the work of bots and/or illicitly paid humans fronting as the “general left.” The type that reflects your viewpoints pretty well but injects their comments with a little something extra, inflaming you or depressing more than what seems reasonable, maybe pushing you a little closer to the edge, whatever that edge may be.

We (or at least I) have no idea how much astroturfing is happening in the comments. It’s probably best to take anything that seems peculiarly provocative with a grain of salad.