Most in Wilmington Successfully Move to DTV
Most TV viewers in the Wilmington, N.C., market seemed to make the digital transition successfully five months early on Monday (CD Sept 9 p6), said broadcast executives and civic-group officials. But hundreds of viewers called the FCC or the five stations that stopped analog programming seeking last-minute help, mostly with digital converter boxes and antennas, said station general managers. Although some stations got more inquiries than they had expected, employees and student volunteers helped solve about 75 percent of the problems, they said. Stations and pay-TV companies in the market said they had no technical problems making the switch at noon Monday.
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WECT, WILM, WSFX-TV and WWAY said they got 226 calls 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday, when their phones were staffed. The FCC’s toll-free number, where Wilmington stations had directed inquiries, got more than 500 calls Monday, broadcasters said. Most callers needed help setting up converter boxes or scanning TV channels into them, or turning or raising antennas to pick up digital broadcasts, they said. “We think it was pretty successful, especially since the issues weren’t as severe as some had thought they would be,” said Vice President John Greene of Capitol Broadcasting, the owner of WILM. “Most of those problems could be solved over the phone,” added Greene, who helped coordinate the market’s switch to DTV.
“So far, so good,” said WILM General Manager Constance Knox. “The biggest problem I've seen so far even before today is people not having their antennas high enough.” The station got eight calls, she said. “I can’t think of anything we didn’t do that we could have done” on educating viewers, Knox said. “I think we've hit a home run” in alerting viewers, said WWAY General Manager Andy Combs. But he said “the rest of the country can expect that there are going to be a lot of people out there who aren’t going to pay attention to how to set up their converter boxes properly, how to set up their antennas,” and that may produce calls to stations.
Informational efforts paid off, agreed WECT General Manager Gary McNair. “We just need to work with the ones that are having a little bit of technical issues … There was some very simple stuff there” that people called about, less complex than he'd expected. But the station got 160 calls Monday, about a third more than he had expected. Many people sought help because they didn’t follow the set-up instructions that come with converter boxes, said Combs.
The full-power stations across the country would get more than 138,000 calls total Feb. 18 if they come at the rate Wilmington stations got them. That’s 79 calls a station, one from each of about 1/10 of a percent of all U.S. homes with a TV. The calculation was made by using Nielsen data on the number of TV homes in Wilmington, which a spokeswoman said the firm estimates has 187,480, and using FCC figures on the number of commercial TV stations. The figures exclude calls to the FCC, because general managers said some people probably called both 877-DTV-0809 and their stations. An FCC spokesman couldn’t provide figures on the number of calls to that number.
Some broadcasters said the number of calls received by Wilmington stations can be a rough guide for what counterparts elsewhere can expect Feb. 18. “I think it would be accurate to try to project those figures,” Capitol’s Greene said. WILM’s Knox said the projection might be conservative, because the FCC did more outreach in Wilmington than it could possibly do in all cities. “We did have extra FCC help that I don’t think the rest of the country is going to get, so to fill in that difference it’s going to have to come from the communities and from the stations,” said Knox. WWAY’s Combs and WECT’s McNair said it’s unclear how representative Wilmington is of the country. They cited differences including geography and the number of pay-TV viewers.
Broadcasters’ education may help reduce call volume come Feb. 18, said an NAB spokesman. “It will make it easier for the stations, because they'll have to take less calls, and it will make it easier for viewers, because they won’t have to wait in line to get their calls answered,” he said. Call volumes from Wilmington-area residents subscribing to Charter and DirecTV didn’t seem to pick up at all because of the early DTV switch, company spokeswomen said. “The transition went well” with “no issues” for Time Warner Cable, said a spokeswoman. A spokeswoman said Dish Networks had no technical problems.
The number of calls to stations is the best measure of viewers’ problems with TV service, said Hank Price, president of the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters. “If there is a problem, the first place they call is the TV station where they watch local news,” he said. “For instance, if we preempt a soap opera for a weather emergency, the switchboard lights up.” Already, the Wilmington test has yielded lessons about the importance of antennas in the transition, he said. And the switch highlighted the issue of battery-operated TVs, he said. “The battery-operated TV issue is an important one and I think it was a great advantage that the FCC picked a market that is subject to threatening weather.”
If Wilmington viewers have had problems with their TV service this week, they haven’t raised them much around town. Bob Livingstone, past president of the Wilmington Kiwanis Club, asked more than 60 members at a meeting last week to keep an ear out for DTV hiccups this week, but so far no reports have come in, he said. “It seems to have gone fairly well,” Livingstone said. “They did a very good job of advertising it down here. It was on the television all the time. They just absolutely drenched the airwaves with information.” Likewise, no reports of problems reached Amigos Internacional’s Centro Latino in Wilmington, a spokesperson said.