Posted on Wed, Jun. 10, 2009 11:17 PM
Are you ready to go digital? TV stations set to sign off analog on Friday
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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.
For more digital TV coverage from Aaron Barnhart, visit KansasCity.com and click on TV Barn.
Posted on Wed, Jun. 10, 2009 11:17 PM
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