The number of redeemed DTV coupons probably will exceed 33.5 million within days, NTIA data for the week ended Tuesday show. That’s the maximum number of coupons Congress provided for when it appropriated $1.34 billion for vouchers in the DTV Transition and Public Safety two years ago. An additional $490 million in economic stimulus money this year increased the amount to $1.83 billion, enough for 12.25 million more coupons, for 45.8 million total. NTIA data show that the coupon program Tuesday had $313.9 million available, for just under 8 million new coupon requests. But July 31 is the deadline for applications. New applications are averaging about 40,000 a day, well below the 155,000 in the days immediately following the June 12 analog cutoff, NTIA data show.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
Beware of boarding the wrong airplane if you're planning to attend the 3D Entertainment Summit, Sept. 16-17 at the Hilton Universal City near Los Angeles. Organizers, including the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, are billing the conference as the “must-attend event for individuals and companies working at the intersection of content, technology and entertainment” in 3-D. Details about the conference are at www.3d-summit.com. But don’t forget the hyphen in the address. Omitting it will land you at a site for an event called the 3D Summit, described as the “most advanced and comprehensive learning experience in 3D digital dentistry.” It’s scheduled for Sept. 17-19 at the Scottsdale Center for Dentistry in Arizona.
“Events have not borne out” the fears petitioners expressed when they asked the FCC to regulate DTV patents and to punish violators that don’t license their technologies on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis (CED Jan 5 p1), Funai told the commission in an ex parte filing Tuesday.
OEM supplier Alco Electronics agreed to pay the FCC a $9,000 fine to settle allegations it violated commission rules on the marketing and labeling of DTV converter boxes, according to an order and consent decree approved June 25 and released last week. Alco distributed at least nine models of NTIA-certified converter boxes under the RCA and Venturer brands, according to NTIA’s database. It’s believed to be the first converter-box supplier accused of wrongdoing since NTIA launched the DTV coupon program a year ago January, though the consent decree is fuzzy on how the FCC thinks Alco violated the rules.
LOS ANGELES -- It’s “a mistake to think the green wave has passed” because of the economic crisis, Dan Esty, an environmental law professor at Yale University, said in a keynote Wednesday at the Entertainment Supply Chain Academy conference. But there are “new market realities,” he said. Above all, “the public is ready to rebuild the economy around sustainability as a watchword,” Esty said. But consumers will demand value, quality, durability and “authenticity” in the goods and services they buy, he said.
LOS ANGELES -- The Blu-ray Disc Association’s 3-D task force will meet again in late July, Tony Jasionowski, senior manager of Panasonic North America’s Technology Liaison and Alliances Group, told the Entertainment Supply Chain Academy conference Tuesday. Panasonic has committed to introducing its first 3-D-capable Blu-ray players by mid-2010, assuming the BDA finishes its standards work by the end of this year, as Panasonic hopes it will, Jasionowski said.
Best Buy “saw a lot of activity overall” in the week leading up to Friday’s DTV switchover, Executive Vice President Mike Vitelli told analysts Tuesday in the chain’s Q1 earnings call. Best Buy sold more than 175,000 converter boxes the week of the transition, about seven times the volume it sold “in a normal week,” he said.
The number of retail accounts taking part in the NTIA’s DTV coupon program has fallen about 11 percent since late March, agency data show. But none of the big-box retailers that have accepted most of the 31 million coupons redeemed has “left the program,” said NTIA spokesman Bart Forbes. “Over the course of the TV converter box program, some retailers -- primarily smaller ones -- have left voluntarily and some have left for lack of coupon redemption activity,” Forbes said. Retailers that leave the program on their own don’t have to give notice, he said. But NTIA’s “retailer management team communicates with retailers when they became certified, when they start taking coupons and as they prepare to leave the program,” Forbes said. Though the number of participating retail accounts fell to 1,975 the week ended last Tuesday from 2,213 the week ended March 25, the number of stores per account accepting coupons rose to 15.5 from 14.3, NTIA data show.
Homes unprepared for DTV in the “home stretch” to June 12 would be “hard to motivate” as well as to reach, Burson- Marsteller told the FCC in an April proposal that landed the mega-agency the $3.5 million contract to provide the commission with consumer outreach “support services” in the final phase of the DTV transition (CED May 12 p1). To reach these “at-risk audiences,” any 11th-hour campaign should “interrupt them where they live, motivate them to get prepared … and surround them with its message from multiple channels, from sources they know and trust,” said the proposal, released to Consumer Electronics Daily’s publisher, Warren Communications News, under the Freedom of Information Act.
DTV coupon demand spiked to just under 320,000 orders Thursday, the day before the deadline for full-power analog cutoff, the NTIA said early Friday. Thursday brought the most coupon orders of any day in months. It was the tenth- biggest day since the coupon program went live Jan. 1, 2008 - -- which was the second-highest day, at more than 474,000, the agency said. The most orders, more than 908,000, came the day after that. The other highest-volume days were Dec. 17, 2008, to Jan. 6.