Onn Ultra-Thin Multi-Directional Indoor Antenna w/ 75-Mile Range Expired

This will not work. Coax is shielded cable. The shield is connected to ground, and the center (conductor) is where the signal is. Since the shield is grounded, it prevents any signal from reaching the conductor. Connecting the center to the screw on a light switch will just ground IT as well, which will give you little if any signal. A single unshielded wire would work much better. And no, a longer wire will not necessarily work better; it needs to be a specific length based on the frequency range of the channels you're trying to receive.

In my experience, these amplified antennas are crap unless you live close to the broadcast towers. If you live in a house, spend about 20 bucks for a Yagi antenna and put it in your attic pointing in the general direction of the towers. Bring a small TV up in the attic with you and connect it directly to the antenna while you position it. Then connect your house cable. If you find that you get a poorer picture downstairs then you did in the attic, it's possible you have too many splitters. Splitters reduce your signal even if not all legs are in use. And the more legs a splitter has, the more loss each leg sees. So if you have a 4 way splitter with only 2 legs used, replace it with a 2 way splitter. If you have a 2 way splitter to a room where the cable connection isn't being used, replace the splitter with a barrel connector. It's better to prevent signal loss than to use a signal amplifier farther down in the signal chain, because when you add an amplifier, you're also boosting any noise that might have been picked up. If you must use an amp, get it as close to the antenna as possible (which gets us back to the original crappy amplified antennas, but the problem with those is the actual antenna, not the fact that they're amplified).

I miss my Locast

Shipping is $5.99 - kills the deal for some.