No Widespread Consumer Confusion Found in Early DTV Switch
Widespread consumer confusion from an early switch to DTV by 421 stations Tuesday in dozens of markets (CD Feb 18 p1) didn’t come to fruition, agreed broadcast and cable executives and some consumer groups concerned about viewer readiness. Based on viewer queries to a call center run by the FCC and to broadcasters and cable operators, callers generally seemed to know what DTV is and sought help making the transition, they said. Queries to 888-CALL-FCC were said to have greatly abated Thursday from Wednesday.
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Most of the recent viewer calls were on specific questions like how to connect DTV converter boxes or get them to scan digital channels, how to get $40 NTIA coupons to help defray their cost and whether to move an existing antenna or get a new one, they said. Many callers didn’t know they had to set their TVs to channel 3 or 4 when using converter boxes and had to use those devices remote controls, not the sets’, they said. Such questions were relatively easy to answer, they said.
“These are low-level worries for the industry” and helping viewers rescan digital converter boxes takes about 30 seconds, said a NAB spokesman. “It went better than anyone expected.” Stations that cut analog service received an average of 50 to 200 calls total Tuesday and Wednesday, “an extremely low number” when combined with almost 28,000 calls the commission got Tuesday, he added. Some 59 Nielsen-designated marketing areas were set to have lost at least four stations’ analog signals by Tuesday.
The FCC handled about half as many calls by Thursday afternoon as it handled the previous day, said Rob Stoddard, a senior vice president for the NCTA. “Things are growing even more quiet coming out of the transition,” he said. “We kind of looked for a spike kind of late in the day yesterday, and at least among phone calls to the [FCC] call center, no spike materialized.” An agency spokesman didn’t reply to a message seeking comment. Updated call figures from the AARP, Communication Service for the Deaf, Pintech and the WXXI Public Broadcasting Council, recipients of $6.9 million in FCC DTV contracts, weren’t available Thursday. They reported receiving a total of about 3,000 calls Tuesday.
The early results of the analog cutoff are encouraging, the FCC said late Thursday. Helping significantly reduce consumer disruption were the deadline delay, increased consumer education and the “limited number of markets” where most or all broadcasters went all-digital, said acting Chairman Michael Copps. The questions most frequently asked through 888-CALL-FCC, from 32 percent of callers, were on reception and technical matters, the commission said. Other large categories of calls were requests for help with converter boxes and complaints that viewers couldn’t get nearby signals. Calls dropped 8.8 percent Wednesday from Tuesday, to 25,320, the commission said.
Cable operators reported no broad customer confusion and few technical problems receiving the digital signals or fiber feeds of stations that cut analog service. “No problems so far,” said a spokeswoman for the Washington Post Co.’s Cable One. Cable operator Bresnan “avoided any pitfall” of confusion by communicating often with viewers, a spokesman said. “We were likewise very proactive with our broadcast partners, and on our side there wasn’t a single hitch that I'm aware of.” Over the past few days, Charter “successfully transitioned approximately one-third of our broadcasters and without significant calls from customers,” a spokeswoman said. A spokesman at Cox said “we have had no technical glitches and everything is going smoothly.”
“I don’t think there has been anything terribly unexpected, we knew what the shape of the problem was here, which is you have a lot of elderly consumers” unaware of DTV and unable to get converter box coupons because of the NTIA’s waiting list, said Consumers Union Senior Counsel Chris Murray. “We're encouraged too by initial reports.” There are sporadic outages of digital converters, in certain regions and at certain stores, said Murray, Consumers Union policy analyst Joel Kelsey and broadcast executives.
Consumer and minority advocates said they continue to worry that some of their constituents didn’t learn of the transition but don’t know to call the FCC or others. “Over- the-air viewers aren’t exactly sending out press releases on how their experience is going,” said Murray. “We're hearing back from some of them, but we don’t know what the real shape of the problem is because many of the affected consumers are effectively voiceless.” Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Executive Director David Honig agreed: “What we're worried about is the people who wouldn’t have called.”