If you cannot receive your local station's signal and can prove it, you can request a waiver from the chief engineer of the station. They might come out and perform a signal check. Hopefully all the air stations will be broadcasting in HDTV soon, though some of them may just be broadcasting upconverted NTSC, which is the old TV signal. When they do, please go back to them, on the antenna to support local broadcasting. Their HDTV signal will be crystal clear if you can receive enough of it. I am a broadcast engineer by trade and we have issued many such waivers, many even to people that didn't really need them, because though the signal was below the legal threshold, was still quite viewable. The waivers are harmful to free broadcast TV, because they cut us out of the loop. Many stations are starting their HDTV operations at low power, whch I think is a mistake. But the nature of the signal is such that if you get it, it will look good, or so I'm told. It is not the local station's fault if their NTSC signal doesn't look good, it's just old analog technology. It can still look pretty good with a proper antenna system. Rabbit ears don't cut it.
The Quadfather