Good news, Twin Cities. We’re actually much readier for the switch to digital TV today than we were a year ago. Back then, the 59 Minnesota counties and 9 Wisconsin counties that make up the Twin Cities viewing area were the second-worst among 56 U.S. metro areas — behind only Portland, Ore. — in the number of households unprepared for the transition. Today, according to the most recent study by Nielsen, the Twin Cities area has moved all the way to the middle of the pack (21st worst) — ahead of places like San Diego, Cleveland, Phoenix, Dallas, Memphis and, yes, poor Portland  – with only 5.85 percent of households still not ready for the switch. That puts the Twin Cities close to the national average of 5.7 percent, according to Nielsen.

That’s only one of several positive things about the DTV switch that are getting lost in the reporting of Congress’ likely decision to push the Feb. 17 date for the transition to June 12.  Here are some others:

* More than 94 percent of U.S. homes are ready for the transition, as Ben Patterson points out for the Yahoo! Tech Gadget Hound blog. At some point, someone has to flip the switch before the rest of the affected people will actually take action.

* More than 1.3 million homes made the switch since the end of December, Nielsen says, from 6.8 percent to 5.7 percent. That’s a significant bump in less than a month and a sign that procrastinators were switching quickly as the original deadline neared.

* Even though a popular viral video pokes fun at old people for not knowing anything about the transition, they are actually more prepared than any other measured segment, according to Nielsen, with 4 percent of those 55 and older ready. In comparison, a whopping 8.8 percent of those under 35 are not ready.

* Some analog TVs are being counted as being “unready” for the switch even if they aren’t used to watch TV programming. These are sets being used, say, in a family room for a dedicated DVD player (actually, probably a VCR) or a video-game system.

* Nielsen’s most recent figures don’t include those who already have government-issued vouchers but haven’t bought a converter box yet. They also can’t capture those people who were planning to subscribe to cable/satellite or buy a new digital TV in response to the switch but were merely putting off the move until the last minute. Now, they have an excuse to wait even longer.

There’s no debating that the switch was scuttled in its final weeks by the government running out of money to fund the vouchers. But the focus should be on getting more money for the voucher program to fulfill the 2.6 million requests in limbo (and thus putting a serious dent in the number of unprepared households), not moving a highly publicized date that has been set for several years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 9:05 am and is filed under DTV switchover. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.