Maybe I'll give you the example of Quebec City. There is a transmitter in Quebec City. The analog transmitter is at the tip of l'Île d'Orléans. It covers Quebec City and also the surrounding area. What you really want to cover is along the St. Lawrence River, from the west part of Quebec to the east. Instead of having one central transmitter that is more or less covering a circle, you can put a number of transmitters along the river for that coverage. The problem is that you may need to build smaller towers, which do not exist now. You may need to share them with cellular telephone companies, so the network will look much more like a cellular telephone tower that you see along the highway. If you go away from that, the signal will disappear. You'll get similar coverage in the case of TV.
The total cost should be lower because the electricity you need to transmit these signals will be lower, and at the end of the day it should reduce the cost of operations.