Locations
Where terrain allows, mountaintop sites are very attractive for non-AM broadcast stations and others, because it increases the stations' height above average terrain, allowing them to reach further by avoiding obstructions on the ground, and by increasing the radio horizon. With a clearer line of sight in both cases, more signal can be received. While the same is true of a very tall tower, such towers are expensive, dangerous, and difficult to access the top of, and may collect and drop large amounts of ice in winter, or even collapse in a severe ice storm and/or high winds. Multiple small towers also allow stations to have backup facilities co-located on each others' towers for redundancy.
Satellite antenna farms are usually located at remote locations, far away from urban development, especially high rise buildings or airplane flight paths, to avoid and minimize disruption to transmission and reception, and so as to not be an eyesore.
Most metropolitan areas have at least one antenna farm, such as Mount Wilson in greater Los Angeles (seen at right), Sweat Mountain in metro Atlanta, Farnsworth Peak for the Salt Lake Valley, Riverview in Tampa, Florida, Baltimore's Television Hill and Slide Mountain (Mount Rose ski area) in the Reno/Tahoe area. Some cities instead have combined many stations onto one tower, often through diplexers into just one or two antennas, such as atop the Empire State Building in New York, the landmark Sutro Tower of San Francisco, or the huge Miami Gardens tower serving the Miami and Fort Lauderdale region. Cleveland, Ohio has its antenna farm in the suburb of Parma, Ohio due to Parma's high elevation.
Read more about this topic: Antenna Farm