Thousands of DTV Queries Made, As Digital Box Supply Varies
Thousands of DTV questions poured into broadcasters and call centers before Tuesday’s analog cutoff by 421 stations (CD Feb 13 p2), industry executives said. Calls and e-mails were expected to mount Tuesday night as some viewers realized they needed to get converter boxes, rescan sets or boxes, or acquire new antennas or move them to receive the signals of stations that stopped analog broadcasts Tuesday, the original DTV deadline. Most callers through midday Tuesday knew of the transition and had specific questions, executives said. The extent of consumer confusion may not become apparent until Wednesday, since many stations were set to stop analog service at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.
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The availability of converter boxes varied by store and city, though inventory ran low on some store shelves, said station executives and retailers. “The last few days they've kind of been flying off the shelves,” said Paul Sands, general manager of Hearst-Argyle-owned NBC affiliates WPTZ North Pole, N.Y., and WNNE Hartford, Vt. “There seems to be a little run on them,” though retailers in the market, which was to go all-digital just before midnight, still had some, Sands added. CEA President Gary Shapiro said supplies were plentiful.
A Target store ran out of boxes in the Champaign, Ill., market, where most stations went all-digital Tuesday, said Hal Campbell, chief engineer of WAND, Decatur, an NBC affiliate owned by Block Communications. A Circuit City store ran out of boxes Monday, its last day in business with the chain liquidating, he said, but Best Buy had several dozen boxes. “I suspect tomorrow, when people turn on their TVs and can’t get anything, they'll be out if they're not out now,” he said, alluding to area stores. “There are quite a few older and poorer people who I suspect are going to be without TV” Wednesday since they can’t afford a converter box and couldn’t get a $40 coupon from the NTIA because of its waiting list.
“Converter boxes have been gathering dust for several months” with “plenty of inventory now” because the consumer electronics industry planned for a nationwide transition Feb. 17, Shapiro said. It’s a “long process” to restart production, he said. “All bets are off for June 12, but we'll do what we can.” There probably still are close to 3 million to 6 million boxes available (CD Feb 6 p1), he said.
Feb. 17 will “go down in history” not for the DTV transition but because President Barack Obama signed an economic stimulus bill that will vastly increase the U.S. deficit, said Shapiro. “You feel like everything you learned from the Great Depression is being played again” with buy- American provisions and other missteps, Shapiro said. (See separate report in this issue.)
Retailers ‘Ready’
Members of the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition are “ready” for DTV, Executive Director Christopher McLean told a meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “Our stores have product on the shelves.” With the stimulus bill signed, a new rulemaking process at the NTIA can use the $650 million included for the converter box program. It likely would take a week to get funding into the coffers and a couple of weeks to process the backlog of coupons, an NTIA spokesman said. The agency is “recalibrating its outreach” on the transition to bring people up to date with the new law, Acting Chief Anna Gomez told the conference: “This is a public safety issue and I take it very seriously.”
Retailers reported some converter box shortages Tuesday. In Lubbock, Texas, where the ABC, CBS, Fox and PBS affiliates were to have cut off analog service Tuesday, boxes were scarce, said Jeff Griffith, sales manager at Radio Lab. His store sold out Tuesday morning after averaging one box-sale per minute, he said. “And the Wal-Marts and Best Buys are all sold out also, from what the customers and TV stations are telling me.” Some inventories didn’t last the weekend, as stations flooded their programming with DTV promotional spots. “We had a really big run over the weekend on new TVs and converter boxes,” said Vance Pflanz, owner of Pflanz Electronics in Sioux City, Iowa. “We've got some more coming, but we did run out.”
Even suppliers have had problems keeping boxes on hand, said Bruce Swanwick, sales manager at Wettstein’s Audio Video in La Crosse, Wis. “We deal with some national companies. They've got orders for them, but they just don’t have the product.” The store will now stock any box it can get its hands on, Swanwick said. “It’s whatever’s available.”
Most retailers and broadcasters we spoke with Tuesday agreed customers seem well educated about the transition. “I thought the phones were going to go crazy, but really it hasn’t been that bad,” said Swanwick. In Columbus, Ga., one customer of Farrar’s Home Center asked for a “convertible” box, said President David Smith. “I don’t think most people understand what’s going on.” He hasn’t run into any inventory problems. More customers are buying boxes without using NTIA coupons, said Swanwick. “The past week we've seen probably about one-third of the people that are coming in are just paying the full price on the box and not taking advantage of the coupon.”
Because cable operators have been educating subscribers about the transition for some time, the delay probably won’t be too confusing to them, Ted Schremp, chief marketing officer of Charter, said in a recent interview. Subscribers of the cable operator have gotten a “consistent” message about preparing for the digital switch, he said: “It’s better to do it sooner rather than later.” Media coverage of the run-up to Congress approving the delay “has just increased awareness” of DTV, Schremp said.
DTV Calls Increasing
Calls to broadcasters and DTV call centers increased as Tuesday neared. Most questions centered on converter boxes, with other queries on antennas, they said. Callers are confused about how to make the transition, but almost all know it’s happening and when, they said. That may change after viewers who didn’t prepare can’t get a signal.
“I think there’s a lot of ignorance still out there -- we haven’t heard the concerns yet,” said a spokesman for Pintech, taking calls from the Carolinas, Virginia and West Virginia under a $2.8 million FCC contract, the biggest one to run call centers. “Unless they are really entrenched into their TV and have been following this I don’t think they even comprehend what the Feb. 17th versus June 12th date means to them.” With many stations cutting analog Tuesday, “we're just getting a lot more calls because people realize it’s the ‘fourth quarter'” and “it’s kind of coming down to crunch time,” he added. The company got 300 calls last weekend -- triple the previous weekend -- and 600 calls Monday and 300 calls by noon Tuesday for a total of 2,500 the past week, he said.
Communication Service for the Deaf, getting $1.1 million from the FCC, handled 846 queries since it started taking them Feb. 9, said a spokesman. Most of the 285 questions that came by phone were “general” questions about how to get DTV, he said. Other questions were on closed captioning, how to get coupons, what types of antennas are needed and how to buy and install digital converter boxes, he said.
The stations in the Plattsburgh, N.Y., market that went all-digital Tuesday probably handled about 700 calls and 480 e-mails, many from the same people, estimated Sands. “Viewer confusion mostly is centered on ‘how do I'” make the transition, not whether it’s happening, he said. It’s the same at WAND in Illinois, said Campbell, who estimated he’s taken more than 100 calls. “I don’t think there will be any confusion tomorrow. People know what to expect.”