Multi-Agency DTV Education Efforts Growing
The NTIA is increasing DTV education efforts by working with other federal agencies and private organizations such as AARP, officials said Thursday at the first meeting of the bodies working together. Representatives of 15 other agencies attended the gathering, said NTIA Acting Director Meredith Baker. They include the Veterans Administration, the office that runs food-stamp programs and the Department of Agriculture. Partners more often thought of in connection with DTV include the FCC and the EPA, which helps oversee an electronics recycling program that could include old analog TV sets.
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The NTIA, an agency not well known and with a limited budget for DTV education, needs help publicizing its digital converter box coupon program -- a crucial piece of a successful DTV transition, officials said. “I don’t think our brand carries much weight with consumers,” said Baker. “I think yours carries much more weight.” Veterans Affairs Assistant Secretary Lisette Mondello said many of the 24 million people it deals with are the kinds that the NTIA is most concerned about reaching. “Our veteran population that are enrolled in the VA are primarily older, many lower income, disproportionately disabled” and many belong to minority groups, Mondello said. That’s the DTV outreach “target audience,” she added.
Requests for coupons have tapered off after an onslaught at the start of the year, when the NTIA began taking orders for the $40 vouchers, Baker said. People in more than 2 million homes have ordered 3.7 million coupons. The NTIA is hiring Spanish-speakers to help take calls to 888-DTV-2009 and will introduce a program letting Spanish speakers use an automated system to request coupons, she said. Initial kinks in the program (CD Jan 3 p2) are being taken care of, she said. “We're making changes every time we hear something is unclear,” said Baker. For instance, customer service representatives now tell callers about the coupon’s 90-day expiration earlier in conversations than they had, she added: “If there is an issue that comes up within the bounds of the [DTV] statute, we are happy to look into it to make this program more easy.”
The NTIA has certified more than 30 converter boxes, said Baker. But only three have analog pass-through -- a permitted but not required feature -- that will let TV viewers get the signals of Class A and low-power stations which will continue broadcasting in analog after Feb. 17, 2009.