Mostly Small Markets Will Make Feb. 17 Switch

Of all the stations that will have ended analog service by Tuesday if the FCC goes along, 137 are PBS stations, 340 are affiliated with NBC, ABC, Fox or CBS and 72 are CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates. Some of the stations are in Wilmington, N.C., or Hawaii and have already switched. A significant amount of analog broadcasting will end Tuesday in states such as Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Rhode Island, Oregon, Vermont, Kansas and Alabama.

The FCC will tell stations as soon as possible if it will block their plans, and markets where most or all stations are planning to switch by Tuesday will get “special scrutiny from the commission,” acting Chairman Michael Copps told reporters Wednesday. The FCC counted 17 markets in which all stations want to end analog service by Tuesday, a spokesman said. In 15 others, all network affiliates want to stop analog next week, he said.

Markets seeking to cut analog service next week may avoid having their plans dashed if the stations agree to do “outreach” to help consumers make the switch, run “walk-in centers” to answer consumer questions and also take viewer calls, said Rick Chessen, Copps’ chief of staff. Agreeing to run some programming in analog, such as local news, would also help their chances, Chessen and Copps said. “There are various things that are still under discussion -- this is very much a work in progress,” Chessen said. The FCC will probably issue a rulemaking notice on the consumer education duties of stations staying in analog until June, Copps said. The stations probably will be allowed to run so-called analog nightlight service limited to programming about the DTV switch and emergency news for 30 days after June 12, he said.

Florida stations outside Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa are largely planning to switch Tuesday. “A lot of the bigger markets and the major corporations are choosing to wait,” said Pat Roberts, president of the Florida Association of Broadcasters. Fort Myers is set to lose most analog service Tuesday (CD Feb 11 p3), and so are Tallahassee, Gainesville, and Pensacola, he said.

Roberts is working with the FCC and the acting chairman’s office to coordinate a statewide analog cutoff in late April, he said. “We cannot wait until June 12 to go as the state of Florida,” Roberts said. “As soon as we complete February 17, I'm going to reach out to general managers and try to come to consensus on a date to go at the same time.”

Florida stations need to go before mid-June to avoid risks from storms, Roberts said. Storms from the Gulf typically pick up around June but have been known to hit in May, he said. “I want it done a full month before we hit hurricane season.” Copps and his staff have been open to working on the issue, Roberts said. “I think they now understand that the last thing you want to do is be going through a transition if there’s a chance of a storm.”

In Kansas, nearly all stations serving Wichita, Pittsburg and Topeka will have cut off analog broadcast by Feb. 18. But Kansas City stations are mainly keeping analog signals on. Kansans losing analog service will be ready by Tuesday, said Kent Cornish, president of the Kansas Association of Broadcasters. Only 1 percent of households in the state don’t subscribe to a pay-TV service and are waiting for coupons from the NTIA to buy converter boxes, he said. “I don’t in any way want to disenfranchise any of those people. … We're way, way below the national average.” Last week, the statewide call center that Kansas broadcasters set up fielded just 42 calls, he said.

Likewise in Mississippi, smaller markets are planning to switch Tuesday, while stations in larger ones hold off. In Greenwood-Greenville, Nielsen market No. 187, stations plan to end analog programming Tuesday but will carry an analog slate message for two weeks, said Sherry Nelson, vice president and general manager of Commonwealth Broadcasting’s WABG-TV Greenwood. Since the stations began running increased on-screen information crawls as required in last week’s public notice, they have been taking more calls from viewers, she said. About 790 over-the- air-only households in the area are on the NTIA’s coupon waiting list, she said. For some of those who can’t afford the boxes without the government subsidy, the station is donating them and helping viewers install them,” she said. “We're not publicizing it,” she said. “It’s just for elderly or if we feel like they truly cannot afford a converter box and they're on the waiting list.” -- Josh Wein, Jonathan Make

DTV Notebook…

President Barack Obama signed S-352 Wednesday, postponing the analog TV cutoff to June 12 from Feb. 17. The law “ensures that our citizens will have more time to prepare for the conversion,” Obama said. Without the delay, millions would have been left in the dark, he said, adding that the administration will keep working with Congress, business and consumer groups to improve information about the switch.

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Nielsen is prepared for Feb. 17 regardless of how many stations end analog service that day, a spokeswoman said. The switch only affects Nielsen in the top 56 markets where it uses electronic people meters to measure viewing behavior. “In smaller markets where we only measure by diary, it won’t affect us,” she said. “For all of the limitations of paper journals, it’s the most digital-ready.” Many of the stations seeking permission to switch early are in smaller markets. (See separate report in this issue.) Meanwhile, for larger markets, Nielsen has several backup plans in place if something goes wrong, she said. If the switch appears to skew ratings badly, Nielsen will address its sampling, she said. “If, for example, in one of our metered markets, we find that so many homes are left out and have no usable data, and they really create an imbalance in the representation of the sample, there are steps we've laid out, and we're in the process of updating that as a result of the delay."

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Three West Virginia public TV stations decided against ending analog service Feb. 17. The stations, owned by West Virginia Educational Broadcasting Authority, told the Commission to ignore their Jan. 16 notices of early termination, filings with the agency show. “We are a rural state and so we felt like if we could, we should go ahead and go along with the wishes of the new legislation for as long as we can,” said a spokeswoman for the stations.