Digital is here

And so the day has arrived. Television has changed. The hype for digital doesn't measure up. We were told of more stable and better signals as well as additional channels. The signals are better but I have spent too much time getting up and fussing with the antenna when the image begins to pixelate, the audio becomes broken, and I am informed that there is "no signal". Explain that to a feline curled on a lap. The additional channels? That's a joke. By far the additional channels are religious oriented: Kid Jesus shows, MTV knockoffs, Benny Hinn curing people in HD; subdigital weather channels that are mostly an advertising venue; public television's numbing bombardment of Norm Abram, Lidia Bastianich, Mark Bittman, Jacques Pépin, Steven Raichlen, Joanne Weir, "America's Test Kitchen", "This Old House"; and a channel called "this" that purports to be the repository of the entire film libraries of MGM, United Artist, RKO Radio, and American International and insists on repetitive airing, for the most part, of such worthy, classic films as Beach Blanket Bingo, Gator, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Malone, Tentacles, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and horribly made-for-TV specials. On fairness, "this" does offer now and then a quality classic film...John Frankenheimer's The Train, Stanley Kubrick's Killers Kiss, The Little Foxes. For us with the analog converter, we are doomed.

Face it, the whole idea was for the government to make some bucks by auctioning bandwidth to telecommunication companies and making television digital. It backfired. It forced citizens to purchase expensive cable or satellite subscriptions, buy a new television, or retain the old [and paid for] television supplemented with a conversion device. The telecommunication companies made money, television manufacturers made money, television retailers made money, equipment suppliers to broadcasting stations made money, converter manufacturers made money. And it cost the federal government millions in advertising and subsides.

Also, we will be treated to roadside trash of discarded televisions along with bagged refuse, air conditioner compressors, tires, and automobile batteries..."Whoopee, we all are gonna die!"

"Millions Still Unprepared for — Gulp — Tomorrow’s DTV Transition"

by

Priya Ganapati

June 11th, 2009

Wired

The switch to digital television will be final Friday as television stations nationwide shut off analog broadcasting. Yet about 2.8 million American households, or 2.5 percent of the television market, are likely to see snow on their TV screens instead of Law Order or House re-runs, according to research firm Nielsen.

"Some people wait till the last minute for everything no matter what," says Scott Wallsten, senior fellow at the think-tank Technology Policy Institute. "This means there are some folks there waiting to make a last-minute dash to the store."

The government had set Feb. 17 as the initial deadline for the switch to digital transmission. But that led to fears that millions of couch potatoes would be left in the cold as funding for converter box coupons that can make analog TV sets digital-ready could fall short. Just weeks before the February deadline, the government postponed the transition by four months, with June 12 as the new cutoff.

That decision may have paid off. In the last three months, the number of households that are completely unready for the change has been cut in half to 2.8 million homes from 5.8 million, says Nielsen. "Given the importance that television plays in the day-to-day life of most people, we expect that most of the remaining unready homes will take the necessary steps to get ready once the stations make the final switch to digital transmission," says Sara Erichson, President Media Client Services, Nielsen.

The National Association of Broadcasters says consumers are taking steps — slowly — to get DTV ready. The group estimates 2.2 million households are still unprepared for the transition. About 3 percent of those have applied for or already received converter-box coupons from the federal government. Many, while while aware of the transition, have not yet taken any action to prepare for it, they say.

"In a free society, we would never expect to see 100 percent consumer participation in a technological change like the digital television transition," says Jonathan Collegio, NAB vice president of digital television. "Some viewers will make a conscious decision to not upgrade, and that is their choice. Over time, however, we expect many of these viewers to eventually make the switch."

The process of getting a digital converter box, though, has been fraught with challenges. The converter boxes can cost between $40 and $80. But a government-issued $40 coupon (limit of two for each household) can subsidize almost all or most of the cost. In January, the coupon program faced a shortage of funds but a government bailout brought more money to the process.

More than $1.5 billion was earmarked for digital-converter coupons. Still, young adults, African American households and Hispanic homes are disproportionately unready for the change, says Nielsen, while the elderly are the most ready.

Among the 56 local markets that Nielsen measures, Albuquerque-Santa Fe is the least ready with 7.6 percent of households completely unprepared, says the company. The markets with the most unready households tend to be in the Western United States, where cable penetration is lower, says Nielsen.

Still the money spent, so far, on the DTV transition will pay off, says Wallsten.

"The important thing to remember is that the transition is going to be bring a lot of benefits," he says. "Reclaiming the spectrum allows it to be used for something more valuable than TV broadcasting like consumer broadband."

Meanwhile, folks that still have the rabbit ears on their TVs might pick up a book for the weekend.

"Are you ready to go digital? TV stations set to sign off analog on Friday"

by

Aaron Barnhart

June 11th, 2009

The Kansas City Star

Something that probably hasn’t happened since you were a kid is taking place at 9 a.m. Friday.

All across Kansas City, television stations will be signing off the air.

The thing is, if everything goes according to plan, you won't even notice.

Six decades of broadcasting analog TV signals — the method first demonstrated by Philo Farnsworth in 1928 — will come to an end as the country's TV stations obey the national deadline for ending analog transmission.

Technically, the stations have until 11:59 p.m. Friday, and one station was given until July 12. However, the city's broadcasters reached a mutual agreement to switch off at 9 a.m. in order to handle customer complaints during the daytime.

Each of the stations is required by law to have phone banks at the ready when it shuts down analog broadcasting.

For one day at least, anyone who has ever felt the frustration of navigating a TV station's switchboard will have no trouble.

Still, most viewers will be unaffected by the end of analog TV. Whether they know it or not, they’re already watching digital TV.

Time Warner Cable, Comcast, SureWest, U-Verse, DirecTV and Dish are the cable and satellite services by which nearly 90 percent of the metro area watches television, and they switched over to carrying the local stations' digital signals long ago.

Most of the remaining viewership has also switched, using converter boxes or new TV sets that they bought in response to months of drum-beating by the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC started warning viewers in earnest prior to the previous deadline in February. That was moved to June 12 after the Obama administration expressed concerns that too many viewers would not be switched over to digital in time.

"Anyone who thinks there's a chance of another delay had better wake up and smell the converter box," acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps said last week. "This is not a drill."

Flipping the switch

According to figures published this week by Nielsen Media Research, fewer than 2 percent of homes in the Kansas City area have no DTV options. Industry experts believe many of those who are described as "unready" won't notice because they use their TVs to watch DVDs and play video games. The best-prepared groups are viewers over 55 and African-Americans; least prepared are young adults and Hispanics.

Even among households that Nielsen considers "ready," however, there have been issues with signals fading — particularly during bad weather — and station engineers have been getting an earful from these viewers for months.

"I get calls from people in the inner city who get a beautiful signal, but when a car drives by they lose it," said Jim Moore, Fox 4 vice president of engineering. "All they have to do is adjust their antenna."

In the outlying areas, some viewers have been fiddling with their antennas for months.

"Sometimes there were stations we could get on the outdoor antenna going into our living room TV that we couldn't get on our bedroom TV, and there were stations we could get on our bedroom TV that we couldn’t get in our living room," said Roger Toomey, who lives in rural Cass County, 50 miles southeast of Kansas City.

Toomey, who majored in broadcasting in college, finally gave up and got a satellite dish. But that came at a cost: He must pay to receive Kansas City stations from Dish Network, and his selection of local channels is limited.

Digital broadcasting allows stations to "multicast," offering more than one program over the air. But Dish isn't obligated to carry multicast channels. As a result, Toomey no longer receives the three multicast channels offered by his favorite local station, KCPT.

"The Create channel that Channel 19 has on — we kinda got used to that," said Toomey. "We miss some of those extra channels."

Over the summer, several local stations will work on improving reception of their digital signals.

WDAF, which has been broadcasting digitally at 80 percent of maximum power, will boost the signal to 100 percent after shutting off its analog signal.

KCPT will also boost its power because its digital signal will no longer cause interference problems for an analog station in Salina, Kan.

People who watch KSMO-TV over the air will benefit later this summer when KSMO's sister station KCTV-5 removes its analog antenna from its broadcast tower on 31st Street — the free-standing "Eye-full Tower" — and moves KSMO's antenna there from its current home in eastern Jackson County.

With analog transmission most area stations have been able to reach about 2 million people, but maps provided by the FCC estimate that the average Kansas City station's coverage will expand significantly and reach as many as 2.3 million viewers as far away as southern Bates and northern DeKalb counties in Missouri as well as the west end of Topeka.

Technically, the analog age won't end until July 12, because KMBC has been authorized to serve as the area's "nightlight" station. Starting at 9 a.m. Friday, Channel 9 will air, on its analog signal only, a program advising viewers, in both English and Spanish, that it's time for them to get a converter box. The program will loop continuously for 30 days.

Most stations in town, however, will power down their analog Friday morning. Most plan to display a countdown clock and information about reaching their customer-help lines. But some old broadcast hands would like to see one last tribute to the glory days of VHF, when channels 4, 5 and 9 were the only choices in town and stations signed off every night.

At WDAF — launched in 1949 by The Kansas City Star — Moore would like to see the old test pattern go up, the one with a Native American's profile on it. And some music to go with it.

"I think we should play the national anthem," Moore said. "We will be in our morning newscast and I think we should end the news a minute early, put up the Indian head and play the national anthem."


Barbara Eliasson's digital confrontation

DTV and easy money...for whom?

Told ya...

But there was an even bigger motivating factor: money.

The Bush White House, with the support of many Republicans, was pushing for tax cuts for wealthy Americans. They hoped to find a way to make up for the deficit of funds the U.S. Treasury would receive. The administration was also interested in finding new sources of revenue to help reduce the USA's growing deficit.

The solution: a spectrum auction.

By selling airwaves that had been given to broadcasters - free of charge - decades earlier, lawmakers figured they could raise $10 billion, at least. The spectrum could penetrate walls and other obstacles, making it ideal for wireless broadband and public safety communications.

"Digital TV coupon program hampered from the start"

by

Leslie Cauley

March 24th, 2009

USA TODAY

"Do you really think this will work?"

The question, posed by consumer advocate DeAnne Cuellar, was directed at Tony Wilhelm of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. It was February 2008, and Wilhelm, head of consumer education, had just explained the digital TV coupon program to a group of consumer advocates that included Cuellar.

The program, core to the government's plan to turn the USA into an all-digital TV market, offers $40 coupons — two per household — toward converter boxes that turn digital signals into analog. TVs that use antennas must have a converter; otherwise, they'll go dark once the switch happens. Cable and satellite TV customers aren't affected.

Cuellar, director of the Texas Media Empowerment Project in San Antonio, was concerned that the $1.34 billion program would run out of money before the nation's neediest — the poor, elderly and disabled — could apply. For many, she pointed out, free TV is their only connection to the outside world.

Wilhelm told her not to worry.

"He said most coupon programs have low redemption rates, so he didn't expect many people to use or even want financial assistance", Cuellar recalls.

She says Wilhelm cited grocery store coupons — for cereal, cleaning products and such — which have average redemption rates of 10% or less. "They were confident that everything would be fine."

Cuellar's recollection of the exchange is shared by two other people who attended the private briefing: Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union, and Gene Kimmelman, vice president of international policy for the same group. Wilhelm says he does not recall the meeting or the exchange.

As it turned out, everything was not fine. NTIA exhausted its budget just 10 months later, forcing Congress to scramble to keep the program afloat.

The coupon program "was supposed to help everyone who was losing a piece of equipment that was perfectly functional — their (analog) TV," says Kimmelman. "Instead, at every stage — from the drafting of the (DTV) bill to actual implementation — this program was set up to fail."

As envisioned by Congress, digital TV was supposed to give "free" TV, a fixture in U.S. living rooms for more than 50 years, a much-needed face lift. Instead, the program got so bogged down that lawmakers, in the midst of dealing with an epic financial crisis, had to run to the rescue.

Why did the program go off the rails so badly?

Interviews with more than a dozen current and former NTIA officials, consumer advocates, White House personnel and others suggest a combination of factors. Among them: bureaucratic bumbling, penny-pinching, NTIA's narrow interpretations of provisions in the DTV bill, and relentless warring about money between Republicans, who wanted to spend as little as possible on the DTV transition, and Democrats, who had concerns about funding from the start. Some sources would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they're not authorized to comment publicly and fear retribution from current and former employers.

Demand was seriously underestimated.

"There were so many hurdles and detours (for consumers) that the chances of the program working successfully were very small right from the beginning," says Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., former chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications Technology and the Internet, which has congressional oversight of NTIA.

NTIA's assumptions about the popularity of the coupons proved woefully off target. As of March 18, more than 54.2 million coupons had been requested, and 25.7 million redeemed. Average redemption rate to date: 55.7%.

The agency's miscalculations came into play in dramatic fashion in late December. In a conference call with reporters, Meredith Baker, then acting director, said NTIA was effectively out of money and would have to put consumers on a waiting list. Within days, more than 100,000 requests had piled up. By February, there were more than 4 million, and thousands of requests were pouring in daily.

Factoring in processing time — 4 to 6 weeks — wait-listed consumers had little hope of receiving their coupons in time to beat the DTV deadline, then set for Feb. 17. After a lot of haggling, Congress pushed back the DTV transition date by four months, to June 12. Lawmakers also included $650 million in new coupon funding in the stimulus package approved in February.

Ushering in a new era.

America's DTV plan has been a long time in the making. In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission and Congress started talking about ushering in a new era in TV broadcasting. Talk was spurred, in part, by the Telecom Act of 1996, which called for a transition to an all-digital TV format when most consumers had abandoned analog TV.

There were many potential benefits. Digital technology is far more efficient than analog, so broadcasters could squeeze more channels into the same space. Pictures would be sharper; colors, brighter.

But there was an even bigger motivating factor: money.

The Bush White House, with the support of many Republicans, was pushing for tax cuts for wealthy Americans. They hoped to find a way to make up for the deficit of funds the U.S. Treasury would receive. The administration was also interested in finding new sources of revenue to help reduce the USA's growing deficit.

The solution: a spectrum auction.

By selling airwaves that had been given to broadcasters — free of charge — decades earlier, lawmakers figured they could raise $10 billion, at least. The spectrum could penetrate walls and other obstacles, making it ideal for wireless broadband and public safety communications.

Many Democrats, including Markey, supported the auction plan, but they also had concerns. The transition, they pointed out, would idle as many as 70 million analog TVs. Democrats said it was only fair for the government to make sure the switch was cost-free for affected consumers.

Ultimately, the DTV bill passed with bipartisan support. It was signed into law by then-president Bush in early 2006.

NTIA, which oversees U.S. spectrum usage, was directed to implement the coupon program. Its budget: $1.5 billion, including $1.34 billion for the coupon program. That was far less than the $4 billion Democrats had requested but a lot more than the $400 million Republicans had initially proposed.

America's TV spectrum hit the auction block a year later, in January 2007. The sale raised $20 billion, about double what many had expected. The money was earmarked for a range of government uses, including $7.2 billion for deficit reduction.

According to two former officials who would not speak for attribution, NTIA's decision-making during this period was based primarily on two factors: the DTV switch date — Feb. 17, 2009 — and the coupon program's budget.

Many decisions boiled down to: "What money do we have, and how far can we make the money stretch?" one of the former officials recalls.

Against that backdrop, the agency made a number of pivotal decisions:

•Expiration rules. The DTV bill requires that coupons expire after 90 days. The bill is silent, however, about whether a household may reapply once coupons expire.

NTIA took the position that households could not reapply. After 90 days, expired coupons were reissued to other consumers. The agency's policy had the effect, over time, of limiting the number of people who could use coupons, Kimmelman says. One of the former NTIA officials says the decision was influenced by funding limitations.

•Definition of "households." The DTV bill states that each U.S. household may apply for up to two coupons, but does not define the word. As a result, NTIA was free to use its own discretion.

NTIA decided to use the U.S. Census definition — a single, residential dwelling where one family lives, with no shared dining or living facilities. The agency's decision eliminated broad swaths of America, including nursing homes, drug-rehab centers and residential hotels. People living in unconventional arrangements — such as ministers who maintain living quarters in their churches — were also out.

•P.O. boxes. Though the DTV bill is silent on this issue, NTIA decided that people who only used P.O. boxes, with no fixed address, weren't eligible for coupons. (Native American reservations were the exception.)

The former NTIA officials say this decision was driven, primarily, by concerns about fraud, which could have drained funds. The agency considered setting up a system for verifying the authenticity of P.O. boxes but decided that would have been time-consuming and expensive.

•Bulk mail. In the DTV bill, Congress instructed the agency to use the U.S Postal Service, but left the details up to NTIA. The agency decided to use bulk mail, which is far cheaper than first class but slower. Mail traveling first class arrives in days; bulk mail can take weeks.

The bulk-mail decision came under harsh criticism in late December, when NTIA ran out of funds and coupon requests started piling up.

Even with all those limitations, however, consumers continued to clamor for the government's $40 coupons.

When the FCC conducted a citywide test of DTV in Wilmington, N.C., in the fall, NTIA received requests for almost 76,000 coupons — five times the number of over-the-air TV households that Nielsen said existed there. Part of that was due to the efforts of the FCC, which had blanketed the local market with public service ads leading up to the test.

According to one former government official, NTIA became concerned that the surge in media attention would result in artificially high coupon requests. For that reason, the same person says, NTIA groused when the FCC made plans to put a DTV clip-and-mail coupon request in AARP The Magazine, circulation 25 million.

The FCC placed the ad anyway.

Defending the NTIA.

The NTIA's Baker, who has since left the agency, declined multiple requests for an interview. She did send an e-mail to USA TODAY shortly after her resignation: "NTIA effectively and efficiently administered the program that Congress designed," she wrote.

However, in an interview with Communications Daily, a Washington-based trade publication, Baker had plenty to say. She blamed NTIA's penny-pinching ways, in part, on the White House's Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for making sure federal programs adhere to their budgets.

In the interview, published Feb. 5, Baker makes it clear that money was a constant concern. NTIA "ran a very strict program because Congress gave us a very tight legislative package," she says. She cites the bulk-mail decision as an example of the agency "being sensitive to cost."

Said Baker, "We really tried to make this a bipartisan effort for everyone to know what we were doing, exactly what the numbers were, because it was Congress' program, and Congress was going to have to make changes if changes were to be made."

Baker's comments stand in contrast to NTIA's report to Congress last fall. In the Nov. 6 report, submitted on Baker's watch, the agency assured Congress that it had "sufficient funds" to meet its coupon obligations and could possibly "return as much as $340 million to the U.S. Treasury."

In the report, NTIA allowed that there were also "less optimal but possible" scenarios: that consumer demand could surge significantly, causing NTIA to exhaust its funds.

In that unlikely event, the agency noted, "NTIA will notify the Congress and address the matter as quickly as possible."

How many TVs?

NTIA, remarkably, never had a hard fix on how many TVs might be affected. When the DTV bill was passed, estimates varied widely, from a low of 20 million to more than 70 million. Republicans, who wanted to spend as little as possible on DTV, tended to embrace the smaller estimate; Democrats favored the higher one.

NTIA decided to do a little sleuthing on its own.

Since cable and satellite customers wouldn't be affected by the switch, NTIA figured they wouldn't request coupons in large numbers, one of the former officials recalls.

NTIA soon hatched a plan: It would ask cable and satellite TV companies to provide numbers of subscribers, by market, to the government. The agency planned to cross-reference those lists with U.S. population maps to come up with a guesstimate of the number and location of free-TV households.

The response from cable and satellite?

"They turned us down flat," the same source says. "They told us they considered that information to be confidential."

In the end, NTIA's predictions about coupon demand were based not on anticipated demand but on simple arithmetic. The agency took its $1.34 billion budget and divided it by $40, the face value of coupons. Total: 33.5 million.

That figure — 33.5 million — became NTIA's coupon cap. In reports to Congress, the agency said demand could ratchet as high as 50 million by the time the program shut down. To pay for the difference, the agency was counting on millions of people allowing their coupons to expire unused.

NTIA was silent about what happened to all the people who inadvertently allowed their coupons to expire. But the reality was this: They were flat out of luck.

On track for June?

What's the lesson here? Kimmelman says the DTV program underscores the folly of any government trying to bring about major cultural and societal shifts on the cheap.

"Programs designed to help people that are run by people whose only interest is minimizing cost are doomed to fail," he says.

The good news: "We now have an administration that wants this program to be successful," says Markey, the current chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. As a result, he says, "I think we will finally have a successful transition" to digital TV on June 12.

As for NTIA, at the request of lawmakers, it is now sending out coupons via first-class mail. Congress has also directed the agency to allow households whose coupons have expired to reapply.

NTIA began processing those requests on Monday.


100s of analog signals are severed

Analog broadcasting signals will cease for some

Bunglers of the spectrum

DTV officially postponed

More on DTV...Kansas City style

Done deal...analog broadcasting switch on hold

Jacques Steinberg's esaay on DTV switch

The House negates digital delay

Digital TV switchover is postponed

Junk televisions and recycling

Bunglers of the spectrum

The following article sums up the debacle.

"How We Bungled the Digital Television Transition"

by

Eliot Van Buskirk

February 20th, 2009

Wired

America's transition to over-the-air digital television signals, which netted the government $19 billion in a wireless spectrum auction, was doomed from the start, thanks to a flawed voucher program and a time frame that left the country stranded between administrations.

In January, close to two million people were stuck on the waiting list for $40 coupons that only cover part of the cost of a digital television converter. The converters make new over-the-air digital signals watchable on analog televisions, expire after ninety days, and originally could not be sent to anyone with a P.O. box or nursing home address.

Recently sworn-in President Barack Obama urged Congress to delay the digital television transition originally scheduled for February 17 until June 12, and Congress complied, costing taxpayers another $650 million as part of the stimulus bill, which will be spent on staffing FCC call centers and outreach programs to help Americans weather a transition most were prepared for.

"It's hard not to be cynical about this, but if you look at the glacial pace with which the federal government has moved in all things concerning the transition, we were immediately concerned as soon as it was clear that the coupon program was unable to process coupons," said Joel Kelsey of the Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. "The largest problem with the transition, and the best argument for delay, was that the coupon program failed consumers when they needed it most."

This failed voucher program, which will cost taxpayers $1.99 billion instead of $1.34 billion, could not keep up with demand. Awareness was not the issue. Traffic to the DTV transition website peaked during the week ending January 3, according to Hitwise. And although the FCC hired an extra 4,265 people to field calls to 1-888-CALL-FCC, only 25,000 people called those centers on February 18, when 421 television stations stopped broadcasting analog signals, according to the National Association of Broadcasters.

"These findings from local stations, coupled with the FCC data, paint the picture that by and large TV households affected in those markets were ready," stated NAB digital television transition vice president Jonathan Collegio. "A relatively small percentage of viewers so far have needed assistance."

People knew about the February 17th date because local stations had been alerting them to that fact for about a year, as required.

"There's no way to quantify the time and the cost of the [messaging] crawls [across the bottom of the screen]," said Dean Ditmer, station manager of WKEF in Dayton, Ohio, whose application to cease analog transmission on February 17 as planned was denied. "It's in the probably billions of dollars across the country in terms of what an advertiser would have had to pay."

"No one can afford that kind of advertising."

Indeed.

Among the extra $650 million dollars the delay will cost taxpayers, there's no allowance for stations that have to pay an average of $40,000 to keep broadcasting in analog, or for companies that paid $19 billion for spectrum they were supposed to get four months earlier.

Plus, the $40 vouchers only cover about two thirds of the cost of a converter box: $60-$80 at big box retail stores or $40-$80 plus shipping and handling online. Considering that the government made $19 billion auctioning public spectrum to private companies, many wonder why the voucher program was not managed properly.

"Millions of people across America would lose access to essential news and information, and the federal government, that mandated this transition, was asking them to pay for something they once got for free," said Kelsey. "Meanwhile, they and businesses across the nation were making money, making profit off of this transition. This is something that consumers didn't ask for, but they are being asked to pay for it."

After three years of preparation, $1.34 billion in government spending, plus another billion or so in free advertising from local stations, diligent consumers who were trying to get the coupons six weeks before the February 17th transition date could not receive these insufficient $40 vouchers, and an estimated seven million Americans were still unprepared for digital television, due to sloppy oversight.

After the DTV Delay Act was signed, 421 local television stations (Excel) applied to the FCC to stick with the original February date, approximately 75 percent of those applications were approved. The remaining 25 percent were denied because the FCC insists that at least one major network affiliate in each local area keep broadcasting local news and emergency information, while others broadcast a "nightlight" video informing holdouts about the transition, during the four months leading up to the new June 12 date.

Which brings us back to the failed voucher program -- the main reason for the delay. Why didn't the NTIA make the voucher cover the whole cost of a converter box? "That's a fantastic question," said Kelsey. "Or why didn't they just put out a request for proposals to manufacturers, and give everyone a converter box."

Making matters worse, the 2005 act set the original transition date for February 2009 -- precisely when the FCC and other governmental agencies change hands -- making a quick reaction to the crisis all but impossible.

"In the midst of it, the administration, rightly, was coming in and saying, 'Look, we're going to have to deal with this giant transition that we've been handed in the first twenty days of our administration, and we're looking at potentially tens of millions of people losing access to their television and emergency news and information, and that's not a situation we want to find ourselves in,'" said Kelsey.

This additional factor added to the need for this expensive delay. "Why the hell – excuse me – why in 2005 did they decide February 17th was a good time for this transition?"


100s of analog signals are severed

Analog broadcasting signals will cease for some

DTV officially postponed

More on DTV...Kansas City style

Done deal...analog broadcasting switch on hold

Jacques Steinberg's esaay on DTV switch

The House negates digital delay

Digital TV switchover is postponed

Junk televisions and recycling

100s of analog signals are severed

KCTV TOWER

And so chaos and frustration begins.

"Hundreds of television stations cut analog signals"

by

Peter Svensson

February 17th, 2009

Associated Press

About a quarter of the nation's TV stations cut off their analog signals Tuesday, causing sets to go dark in households that were not prepared for digital television despite two years of warnings about the transition.

Though most viewers were ready - and people with cable or satellite service were unaffected - some stations and call centers reported a steady stream of questions from frustrated callers. Many wondered how to get coupons for converter boxes that translate digital signals for older TVs - or how to get the devices working.

"It's kind of an irritation, but I understand that everyone will have a much better picture. As far as I was concerned, they could have left things the way they were," said Dorothy Delegard, 67, of Minneapolis, who bought a converter box because a friend gave her a coupon that expires Tuesday.

Phones were ringing off the hook at a walk-in information center set up by stations in Providence, R.I.

A volunteer at the center, Jeremy Taylor, said he tried to calm agitated callers and explain the reasons for the disappearance of analog signals, which have remained largely unchanged since the 1950s.

"I try to explain that the digital switch is not something we're doing to extort them of money," Taylor said.

The federal government mandated the end of analog broadcasts to make room on those frequencies for wireless Internet service, emergency radio traffic and other uses. Digital TV broadcasts, which began several years ago, take up much less of the wireless spectrum.

Originally, all U.S. stations were to cut their analog signals on Tuesday, but at the urging of the Obama administration, Congress voted this month to give broadcasters more time.

Most stations, particularly those in big cities, accepted the offer to wait until June 12. Others wanted to stick to Feb. 17, a date they had spent much airtime advertising. Many of them had also booked engineering work on their antennas for that day.

The Federal Communications Commission, which wanted to ensure that no one would be entirely deprived of analog signals, cleared 421 stations to go all-digital this week. Another 220 stations have already made the switch, including all stations in Hawaii.

The most populous places where many or all major-network stations are cutting analog this week include San Diego and Santa Barbara, Calif.; La Crosse and Madison, Wis.; Rockford and Peoria, Ill.; Sioux City, Iowa; Waco, Texas; Macon, Ga.; Scranton, Pa.; Rhode Island and Vermont.

In most cases, one station in each of those markets will continue sending analog signals until June or will offer a so-called "analog nightlight" for a few months, with limited local news and emergency broadcasts, as well as information about the digital TV transition.

The back-and-forth over the cutoff date threw both TV stations and viewers for a loop.

Jeff Long, manager of WHKY-TV, an independent station in Hickory, N.C., said the company's analog shutdown went smoothly on Saturday, but some viewers complained that they thought it had been postponed until June 12.

RadioShack Corp. circulars in newspapers this weekend had the opposite message, saying Feb. 17 was still the date for the end of analog TV. Spokeswoman Mary Delagarza said the fliers had been prepared two months in advance and could not be pulled.

Congress delayed the cutoff in large part because the fund that pays for $40 converter-box coupons had reached its spending limit. Coupons are now being issued only as fast as old ones expire unused.

The stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday contains $650 million in additional funding. Once that money becomes available, it can clear the backlog of 4 million coupons in a few weeks. Without a coupon, a converter box costs $45 to $80.

Joe Glynn, vice president of engineering at PBS affiliate WVIA-TV near Scranton, Pa., said the station got a dozen calls in the past two days about its planned changeover at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday. The converter boxes have been a frequent subject.

"Unfortunately, some of them have asked how you get the coupons for the converter box. Some of them have called asking us if we sell converter boxes. Others are calling and saying 'I got the converter, but I'm not getting anything on it' - I'm assuming because they don't have it hooked up right," he said.

He said most callers acknowledge that they only have themselves to blame for procrastinating.

"Everybody admits it's their fault. They knew it was coming," he said. "Some people seemed to be mad at themselves for not doing something sooner."

Even converter boxes that are correctly installed may drop some channels. That's because apart from killing analog, many stations are also changing to new digital frequencies. Viewers who were already watching the digital signal, either through a converter box or a digital TV set, will lose the channel until they force the device to "rescan" the airwaves.

In addition, many households will find that they need new antennas. Digital signals generally come in better than analog ones, but they are not received well by some older antennas. Spokeswoman Lea Sloan at PBS said that a rising number of calls to member stations are from people who are getting digital signals, but not all the ones they want.


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