FAQ - Coverage Area, Tower, etc.

Where Is Your Tower?

The transmitting facilities of ABC 7 are located in Manatee County, near the town of Parrish. It takes an area of almost 30 acres to house our transmitter building and tower.

The ABC 7 tower is 814 feet high, or 849 feet above mean sea level. It is lighted day and night by white strobe lights that blink about once every 2 seconds. This lighting is required by the Federal Aviation Administration to provide obstruction lighting for aircraft flying overhead.

For the curious, ABC 7 transmits on the frequency of 627.25 Mhz Visual, and 631.75 Mhz Aural through a directional antenna that beams our signal south from Parrish, FL in an arc of 155 degrees. Our output power is 2880kW. ABC 7 uses several additional microwave and business band frequencies to send our news, weather, and other programming from our Studio on 10th Street in Sarasota, to our transmitter in Parrish, FL.

What is your coverage area?

ABC 7′s news and weather primary coverage area consists of Sarasota and Manatee counties.

This includes Sarasota, Osprey, Nokomis, Bradenton, Lakewood Ranch, Venice, North Port, Palmetto, Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key, Siesta Key, Lido Key, Casey Key and Englewood.

Our extended coverage area includes Hardee, DeSoto, and Charlotte counties with many viewers in Port Charlotte and the portion of Englewood in Charlotte County. It is not uncommon for viewers to pick us up in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties either over the air or on FiOS.

Why do the commercials seem louder than the program?

First and foremost, ABC 7 does NOT turn up the volume on commercials. We employ equipment intended to even out the volume levels on all programs, including commercials. There are legal limits to the maximum volume which can be broadcast, and ABC 7 abides by those limits.

There are two basic reasons why some commercials seem louder. Many commercials contain music, and music nearly always sounds louder than a simple spoken voice. The type of music understandably has a major effect on this phenomenon.

The second cause is called audio compression. This has the effect of making softer sounds louder, so the whole commercial is of a uniform volume. Many commercials are produced with some compression, whereas speech based programs generally are compressed only a little.

Many commercials come from outside production facilities for airing on ABC 7, and we have no control over the level of compression and type of music they may employ. We know our viewers dislike loud commercials, and we would never intentionally cause this condition.

Where to find us:

Over the air (Antenna) – 40.1

Bright house Cable (Manatee County) -- Channel 7 and 1007

Comcast Cable -- Channel 7 (SD) & Channel 431 (HD)

Verizon Fios -- Channel 7 (SD) & Channel 507 (HD)

DirecTV -- Channel 40

Dish Network -- Channel 7