Few Early Glitches Reported In DTV Switchover, Day One

Broadcasters we surveyed in 21 of the FCC’s 49 high- priority markets said the switch went smoothly and the onslaught of callers -- totaling in the thousands -- had specific queries on how to buy, connect, rescan new DTV channels and use the remotes of digital converter boxes and purchase new antennas. No shortages of the consumer gear were reported to any broadcaster we spoke with, as supplies are thought to be ample (CD June 12 p1).

“Overall, things are going relatively well,” said a spokeswoman for Fox Television Stations, which had 14 stations in 11 markets switch as of Friday afternoon. In Houston and Washington, D.C., among the commission’s hot- spots, “the majority of our calls were about issues related to rescanning, hookups [of boxes] or antennas.” General managers of more than a dozen individual stations said callers were asking similar types of questions. Communication Service for the Deaf, an FCC call-center contractor, got several hundred inquiries Friday, with the top issues being captioning, signal loss, antenna questions and queries on how to get the NTIA’s $40 converter box coupons, said a CSD spokesman.

“I think we're in pretty good shape,” said Jerald Fritz, general counsel of Allbritton Communications, whose WJLA Washington went all digital around noon. “They brought [the transmitter power] up slowly, so some people didn’t get right at 11:55 our signal, so they called to see where our signal was, and it wasn’t for an hour or so that we brought it up to full power and everyone could see the signal.”

In San Francisco, where many stations will go all- digital around midnight, “we've got no red flags going in the market at all, or even increased call volume” before the switch, said Valari Staab, general manager of KGO. The analog cutoff at KCRA Sacramento, Calif., and nearby KQCA went “absolutely perfectly,” said General Manager Elliot Troshinsky. At WESH Daytona Beach, Fla., and WKCF Clermont, some callers thought their sets had DTV tuners, only to realize after the analog cutoff they lacked them, said Jim Carter, general manager: “They knew this was coming, they thought they were prepared.” And at WISN Milwaukee, “I haven’t taken one call from anyone today who said ‘oh my God, what is this,” said Jan Wade, general manager. She and others who fielded calls did take extra time to work through technical issues with some elderly callers, Wade added.

About 100 people called into KMBC-TV Kansas City, Mo., in the hours after 9 a.m. when the station ended analog service, said Wayne Godsey, general manager. “Most of the questions tended to surround ‘how do you hook this box up,’ ‘how do you hook up the antenna,’ ‘what kind of antenna do you need'” and how to rescan the boxes, he said. “There were really no surprises. The volume of calls has diminished considerably [by mid-afternoon]. We may have a few people in here in the early evening for people who are getting home from work.”

Mainly senior citizens in Houston called into KHOU-TV after the station shut off analog early morning, said Lisa Shumate, program and marketing director. “We're taking a lot of calls from viewers,” she said. “A lot of elderly, a lot of people who live in more remote parts of town.” Most of the problems viewers have called with were fixable over the phone, but some viewers were unnerved by the change, she said. “For 58 years, people have been getting used to getting up and turning on the tv, and today they did that, and they weren’t prepared if it didn’t work. Especially for the elderly, where it’s their connection to the world, that’s very unsettling.” The station had no technical problems making the switch, she said.

That seemed to be the case for the bulk of stations that had turned off their analog signals by Friday afternoon. “I have not heard of any problems or a flood of calls or anything like that,” said Sterling Davis, vice president of engineering at Cox Broadcasting. By mid-afternoon, Cox stations in “hot spot” markets such as Atlanta and Seattle had made the switch. Ion stations experienced few glitches as well, said David Glenn, president of engineering. “We shut down a few stations in the first round [in February] and we had more issues then than we are having now,” he said. “We did have some Murphy’s Law stuff,” Glenn said. For instance, a high-voltage wire failed at Ion’s Birmingham station, he said. And the task of moving certain broadcast gear from its analog to its digital facilities in New York took a little bit longer than expected, he said. “If you have this many stations, you have to expect certain things to happen.”

Cable operators experienced only a handful of technical problems Friday, generally involving a TV station that had problems getting its DTV signal on the air or up to full power, an NCTA spokeswoman said. “In most cases, stations are saying they can fix the problem in a matter of hours,” the spokeswoman said. “Overall, cable folks are working closely with broadcast engineers to deal with the issues.” Meanwhile, Comcast, which was seeing increased call volume Friday, is prolonging its “rapid response” effort to offer same-day installation service around the country, a spokeswoman said.

Viewers that are having problems are largely calling the FCC’s hotline for information, said Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst with Consumers Union. Traffic to Consumers Union’s Web site and ConsumerReports.com was high Friday, as people were looking for DTV information, but the group fielded few complaints, he said. “Instead those calls are going into the infrastructure the FCC has set up through its call centers, walk in centers and in-home assistance partners. And that’s what should be happening.”

Some technical problems have come up on the viewer end, said DeeNice Rhodes, executive director of DTVOutreach.org, which has been installing converter boxes in the apartments and nursing homes around Washington, D.C. “We did an install right before 12 o'clock today and found out that after, when we did the rescan we actually lost more channels,” Rhodes said. Pixelation has also been a problem, and some older viewers are struggling with the extra remote control in the living room, she said. -- Jonathan Make, Josh Wein

DTV Transition Notes …

The number of full-power stations that weren’t set to make the DTV transition had fallen 9.7 percent Friday from Monday, according to FCC statistics we tallied. A total of 28 stations were to have stopped operations, down from the 31 estimated by the commission earlier last week (CD June 11 p1). June 3, the FCC pegged the number at 35. Five stations were added to the commission’s so-called silent list last week and eight were dropped, we found. Those removed, meaning they'll go all-digital, were: KOBG Silver City, N.M.; KTUW Scottsbluff, Neb.; KQET Watsonville, Calif.; KTDO Las Cruces, N.M.; KARZ Little Rock, Ark.; and Mississippi’s WMAE Boonville, WMAV-TV Oxford and WMAW Meridian. Broadcasters newly identified as not transmitting are: KDMI Des Moines, Ia. (myNetworkTV); WFUP (Fox) Vanderbilt, Mich.; KSNF Joplin, Mo. (NBC); and independents WWAZ-TV Fond Du Lac, Wis., and WVIF Christiansted, Virgin Islands. -- JM

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Only one larger market among the 49 FCC DTV “hot spots” that got extra commission attention in the runup to the transition was to have no analog nightlight service after Friday’s DTV switch, our analysis of agency data found. Besides that market, Des Moines, Iowa, other hot spots without nightlight service are Joplin, Mo.; Monroe, La./El Dorado, Ark.; and Monterey-Salinas, Calif. Baltimore and Nashville, Tenn., will have nightlight service, after FCC officials said earlier this week that no station in the cities had volunteered. Nationally, 118 stations in 85 markets will broadcast educational programming on DTV and emergency information until July 12 at the latest, said a commission public notice late Thursday. It said stations that haven’t volunteered to run nightlight service but are eligible to can make an informal application filing or e-mail nightlight@fcc.gov.