There is little difference between the propagation characteristics of vertically and horizontally polarized radio waves in the UHF TV bands provided that the receiving antenna is correctly orientated. The reason that horizontal polarization is mainly used is that it suffers less from atmospheric noise. This is due to the fact that natural and man made noise is predominantly vertically polarized, thus there is less natural horizontally polarized noise to deal with.

In the case of low power relay stations filling in holes in the coverage of high power stations, vertical polarization is used. This provides some protection against interfering co-channel signals from distant high power stations when weather conditions give rise to anomalous propagation paths.

In difficult terrain, circular polarization is sometimes used even though there is a 3dB loss with a linearly polarized receiving antenna. Despite this loss, circular polarization can be advantageous where diffraction and reflection effects, particularly in forested areas, have a time varying rotation effect on the plane of liniearly polarized signals.