To cope with increasing demands for spectral efficiency, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology is being considered for next generation terrestrial broadcasting television systems. In this paper, we propose a MIMO channel-precoder that utilizes channel statistical structure and is suitable for terrestrial broadcasting systems, while being potentially transparent to the receivers. The performance of the channel-precoder is evaluated in a wide set of channel scenarios and mismatched channel conditions, a typical situation in the broadcast setup. Capacity results show performance improvements in the case of strong line-of-sight scenarios with correlated antenna components and resilience against mismatched condition. Finally, we present bit-error-rate simulation results for state-of-the-art digital terrestrial broadcast systems based on digital video broadcasting—next generation handheld to compare the performance of single-input single-output, 2 $ {\times }$ 2 and $ {4 \times 2}$ MIMO systems and proposed MIMO channel-precoder.