The house electronics are already grounded to that outside pole
What outside pole...the public-utility pole? Your house has its own ground near your power meter. Utility poles have an earth ground to discharge lightening. Your house is not grounded to the utility pole.
There's a lot of metal atop of utility poles and that elevated metal can create a hazard by potentially attracting lightening. If lightening strikes a pole, the surge will discharge at the utility pole via its ground...and not through the electrical coaxial cable you're connecting from the pole to your house. The ground at the pole is only providing an easier path for the lightening to discharge.
By creating the hazard in the first place, the utility companies are only protecting your house from lightening strikes at the poles. That's why they gave you a "heads up" about the other end of that coaxial cable being grounded at the pole.
Houses don't normally get struck by lightening...unless there's a metal object on top of them (weather vane, metal chimney, antenna, etc). The reason to ground those things is to keep the discharge away from your home wiring system. You keep it away by providing an easier path for the discharge to flow into the earth.
You don't want to be "interconnecting" earth grounds...or safety grounds...with electronic grounds. Electronic grounds are used to make your electrical appliances work. Safety grounds, on the other hand, are used to dissipate damaging electricity. You don't want to interconnect or mesh these conductors together because you wouldn't know what path the damaging discharge would take. Discharge it into the earth as opposed to daisy-chaining throughout your household.
By the way, thanks for your replies you clearly know tons more about this area than I do.
"What outside pole...the public-utility pole? Your house has its own ground near your power meter. ". The pole I'm talking about is the small one with our power meter on it in our yard by the south side of the house. There's a ground wire at the bottom of it. Cox Cable's coaxial cable ground shield is connected to that ground wire. Their cable then goes the entire width of the carport and house into the north side of the house which is where I wanted to put the antenna. I didn't plan on putting it on top of the house by the way. I was going to put it midway up on the side of the house at the end of the porch. It needs to face that direction to pick up the channel I really need. So my options seem to be 1)run a very long ground wire (ca 150 feet) to the house ground by the electric meter. 2) Put the antenna close to the house ground on our pole and run a very long coaxial cable from it to the other side of the house (loosing signal) or 3) bury a ground rod (I guess horizontally) since there's no way I could penetrate the rock 2 feet below the surface.
First, I'm not qualified to give any electrical advice. None. Second, I appreciate your kudos but you should consult a certified electrician and not some bozo (me) in a forum.
An electrician knows the codes and can qualify your setup, for example, is the earth-ground at your power meter also the earth-ground for your house or just the ground for the power meter. I assumed your power meter was attached to the side of your house so based on that misunderstanding alone, never take electrical advice on a forum. (I should have known from your "...middle of our yard..." statement but I seemed to have glossed over it.)
You introduced "pole" in your OP so I assumed utility poles. Are there utility poles in your neighborhood? If so, that's how Cox distributes service throughout your neighborhood. If not, Cox distributes service underground to points of above-ground nodes (those green boxes you see in your neighborhood). Anyway, to best explain my understanding is to start at the utility pole. Forget about your house for a moment.
Remember, electricity takes the path of least resistance. "What's my quickest path to an opposing charge?" If lightning strikes a grounded pole, the quickest path to discharge will be through that ground. If a pole is not grounded, the quickest path would be through the coax cable connected to your house.
If your service coax (from the pole) is also grounded at your power meter, it might be due to distance. Meaning, the distance to your house could be shorter (quicker) than the distance to the grounded pole. If that's the case, Cox created an even shorter distance between your house and the pole.
This same rule applies to your antenna. (It's best to just consider your antenna...or any elevated chunk of metal...as a lightening rod. It doesn't matter if it's not atop your house: it's outside, made of metal and vulnerable.)
If lightning were to strike your antenna, what would be its path of least resistance: a point 150 feet away...a point 10 feet away...or a proportion of both? You need to install the easiest path.
Aren't there rocks beneath your power meter? Somebody penetrated those rocks.
Aren't there rocks beneath your power meter? Somebody penetrated those rocks
They put that pole in with the house before I got here with some heavy equipment I'm sure. No doubt it can be done but it's all much more than I expected. Then again I have no experience with antennas and house electricity in general. I just bought this $40 antenna at Walmart and noticed a sidenote about grounding. Since then I've read more and more bits and pieces as I try to figure out how to do it. Nearly all TV will be seen through streaming but there's 1 TV for an elderly person that needs to turn on with his channel from the antenna if he happens to turn the TV on himself. Usually someone else gets it going and can deal with Roku menus etc. Right now I've got the antenna inside (and it's sort of working for a few channels). There's another project needing an electrician so now the plan is to see if he can hook this antenna up outside. Thanks
Why'd you buy an outdoor antenna? There are some good indoor antennas. If you can return or exchange at Walmart, I'll provide a list of the best indoor antennas on Consumer Reports.
Do you have an attic? You can try setting up there.
https://www.consumerreports.org/antennas/hdtv-antenna-reviews-indoor-tv-antennas/
www.soundandvision.com/.../review-winegard-flatwave-amped-hdtv-antenna
