More than one-third of the nation’s TV stations, 641, have shut off their analog broadcasts as part of the government-mandated switch to digital television. Many of them, 421, did so on Tuesday, the original date of the transition, including the CW (Channel 23) in the Twin Cities and several others across the state.  Initial reports are that stations nationwide had a relatively low number of calls from viewers complaining they had lost their signal. Here’s more on that, along with other notes about the transition:

Post-switch fallout: Of the government-estimated 12.4 million households that receive over-the-air broadcasts exclusively, the FCC said it received 28,000 calls from viewers nationwide after Tuesday’s big shutdown. That’s 0.23 percent of the people affected. That’s incredibly low. Four things could be going on here: (1) The affected people didn’t really care about the one or two channels they lost. (2) They haven’t yet realized they lost the channels. (3) The large shutdown in advance of the all-out switch on June 12 prompted those people to finally do something about it — switch to cable or satellite, buy a new TV or get a converter box for their old setup. (4) The estimates of how many people are affected are overstated. It’s probably all four.

Operational issues: When I talked to general manager Bill Sanford of Lakeland Public Television in the Bemidji-Brainerd area for an article, he said most of the calls his station received had to do with people asking questions about setting up the converter boxes needed for analog TVs to receive the digital signal. Sanford said one viewer who was having issues didn’t know he had to plug in the device. Seriously. The National Association of Broadcasters said that of the 50 to 200 calls that stations received on average after Tuesday’s switch, most dealt with converter-box issues and most questions were resolved over the phone. The biggest problem apparently is rescanning. Often when stations shut off their analog signals, other moves are made that affect the digitial signal (such as moving from a UHF frequency back to VHF), and viewers don’t know that they need to have their box rescan to continue receiving the channel. 

Converter box program: Nearly 4 million people are on the waiting list for $40 vouchers to defray the costs of buying a converter box. The U.S. Department of Commerce says those coupons should finally start going out early next month, now that the government has re-funded the program. The agency expects to clear the backlog over the month of March. Incidentally, of the 52.4 million vouchers requested since the program started a year ago, only 23.4 million were actually redeemed before they expired.  However, I assume that people requesting coupons at this late date are more likely to use them since it’s being done out of need not as insurance. 

Channel 17: One thing lost in the hubbub over Tuesday’s switch was that Channel 17 went away in the Twin Cities on Wednesday. This was the secondary channel operated by Twin Cities Public Television, and it carried multiple feeds of PBS programming. Some of those programs will now be shown on Channel 2’s multiple feeds. TPT has a more thorough explanation of what happened with Channel 17 on its website.

Finally, one reader called to complain about why the media is giving so much attention to the less than 6 percent of people who reportedly aren’t prepared for the switch. The converse is that more than 94 percent of people are prepared, she said. Sanford at Lakeland Public Television echoed that when he pointed out that his station has been preparing for the switch for five years and mounted a big campaign to inform viewers about it, including monthly call-in shows that were broadcast live. At some point, he said, people have to do something.

What’s it going to be like on June 12?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 8:58 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.