DTV Reception Problems Worry Commissioners

Some witnesses said most viewers can get all DTV channels by properly scanning digital converter boxes. “Most callers are unable to distinguish between true reception problems and scanning problems,” said Association for Maximum Service Television President David Donovan. Almost all viewers could receive all stations after they were walked through the proper steps, he said. “The frogs aren’t falling from the sky, and certainly no anvils are falling from the sky.” Gary Epstein, a short-term DTV adviser to the office of acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps, agreed. “We had a mostly uneventful and successful partial transition, and I emphasize partial,” Epstein said. “There were no real crises.”

Questions about scanning and reception were the most common in the 152,500 calls taken Feb. 12-21 at 888-CALL-FCC, said Chief Information Officer Andrew Martin. “As the chairman mentioned, I think millions of calls is still on the table” as possible total number in the lead-up to June 12, Martin said. He hopes for “a more thoroughly trained agent [staff] with more skill” to run diagnostics and spend about 10 minutes on each call, on average. The FCC must “be prepared for millions of calls between now and June,” though predicting call volume is “an inexact science,” Copps said.

“It’s absolutely essential to get” word out before June 12 to consumers who stand to lose signals, Copps said. “We must tell the American people the truth. They don’t want their information sugar-coated,” or alarmism, on who needs a new antenna and where digital signals will be “less robust than they may have thought,” said Copps. “With apologies to Jack Nicholson, consumers can handle the truth.” It’s a “huge priority” for the FCC to identify places that may lose signals, Copps told reporters. “We better keep working fast and furious at trying to narrow that down and pinpoint not only the gross number of people impacted but figure out where it is.” He wouldn’t say whether the April 8 open FCC meeting also will cover DTV. “We're going to continue to highlight this problem, but the commission as you know is doing lots of other things right now.”

NTIA Coupons Again Flowing

Economic Stimulus money has begun flowing into the DTV coupon program, allowing the NTIA to begin clearing its waiting list without having to wait for money from expired coupons to be recycled back into the program, Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, associate administrator of the NTIA’s Office of Telecom and Information Applications, told the FCC. The NTIA thinks it will take about two and a half weeks to get through the “backlog,” she said. “The funding will also allow us to issue approximately 12 million new coupons and we expect, depending on redemption rates, to have another million and a half or three million available for distribution.”

The NTIA “within the next two weeks” will issue new final rules conforming with the DTV Delay Act that will allow the agency to fill orders for replacement coupons from consumers whose first coupons expired without being redeemed, McGuire-Rivera said. The rules, which will be “very simple,” will take effect upon publication in the Federal Register, she said. “We're in the process of retrofitting our systems now, so when the rule becomes effective, we'll be able to move with that.”

Under questioning from Copps, McGuire-Rivera said her agency thinks perhaps half of the 16 million coupons that have expired “will come back into the program.” To speed processing and delivery of coupons, the NTIA has gone from bulk-rate to first-class mail and added banks, she said. It now has capacity to process 2 million coupons a week, she said. She said the NTIA doesn’t fear having to compile a waiting list again, unless consumers all wait until June 11, the day before the cutoff, to apply.

The NTIA also is changing its rules to provide for “an alternative mechanism to deliver coupons other than through the U.S. mail,” she said, without mentioning specifics, such as e-mail delivery. The agency has no “firm plans on exactly how that would operate right now, but that’s something that we're looking into,” she said.

The NTIA expects to use about $3.5 million of the $90 million Congress set aside for DTV education, with the FCC likely using the rest, McGuire-Rivera told reporters. Copps later declined to say how much money the FCC may use. The NTIA will focus on the 5 million households Nielsen says are “still totally unready” for the DTV transition, she said. “It’s going to be a tough group to find.” Those “last 5 million” households “are a special circumstance,” McGuire- Rivera said in her testimony. “This last group needs special attention.” Nielsen has done special research on the 5 million that will help the NTIA “retool” its advertising message, she said.

Challenges Ahead

Many viewers will be “left in the dark” because of antenna issues and may need to move them, buy amplifiers or take other steps, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said. Although most viewers simply need to occasionally re-scan their digital converter boxes, some will lose signals and “it’s better to inform people upfront rather than getting a rude awakening on June 12th,” he added. Commissioner Robert McDowell is happy Feb. 17 “will thankfully not live in infamy.” Lessons learned from then should be applied “to the major challenges that lie ahead of us,” he said. “We also know that consumers in many places around the country are going to encounter reception problems” when analog broadcasts cease altogether. That will come as a surprise unless they're warned, McDowell said.

NAB President David Rehr agreed that “challenges remain” but said Feb. 17 “went well” and viewers “have gotten the DTV message.” “The first challenge is rebranding the June 12th date” in viewers’ minds, he said, citing “antenna issues” as among possible difficulties. Broadcasters took the suggestion of McDowell at the FCC’s last DTV meeting (CD Feb 6 p1) and are naming leaders in each market to coordinate transition efforts, Rehr said. Nielsen said Thursday that 4.5 million households, 3.9 percent of the U.S. total, are unready for the transition, 570,000 fewer than less than a month ago.

Despite “many policy disputes” between broadcasters and cable operators, NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow said the two industries worked well on the technical “nitty gritty” of switches. “We have a huge challenge in front of us” with 85 percent of terrestrial TV viewers in markets where few or no stations have yet switched, he added. CEO Sandy Markwood of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging and Mark Lloyd, vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said analog cutoffs last month went smoothly. But they added that their groups, which got money from the NTIA for education, have much work ahead.

From the “retailer’s perspective, the remarkable thing about Feb. 17 and 18 is that nothing remarkable happened,” said Chris McLean, executive director of the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition. In fact, for some coalition members, the week of Feb. 17 was a slower week for converter box sales than the previous week, he said. And February “has been a much slower month for sales than January,” he said.

“From this vantage point, our report is, so far, so good,” McLean said. At every turning point in the DTV transition, beginning with the Wilmington, N.C., cutoff in September and through Feb. 17, coalition members and other retailers have had “ample” supplies of converter boxes in stock, McLean said. “Since Feb. 17, converter sales for some members have continued to slow, as has coupon demand,” he said. “But given the circumstances, that is not too surprising.”

Coalition members “have stock on the shelves and new supplies are on the way,” McLean said. One member reported in a Thursday e-mail that its stocks were “plump,” McLean said. “One thing seems very clear,” he said. “Based on our communications with CERC members, the converter box market is closely tied to the availability of coupons. Published reports indicate that less than 10 percent of converter boxes are sold without a coupon.”

“There will be individual stores that run out of boxes on one particular day,” McLean told Copps during Q-and-A. “New product is on the way. Deliveries are coming in March. So our members feel ready. They feel prepared.” When Copps’ asked how many more boxes will fill the pipeline through June 12, McLean said, “Our best proxy for the number of boxes we'll need are the number of coupons that are requested… We stay on top of that in real time.”

Some commissioners and witnesses said FCC coordination on the transition has improved. McGuire-Rivera said “having the involvement of the commissioners and the chairman” now “makes all the difference.” Adelstein, asking her about interagency cooperation, complained that “you could never get the White House’s attention” on DTV “until it had a new occupant.” Associate Chief Eloise Gore of the Media Bureau said staffers are drafting an order to implement the next part of the DTV Delay Act. She said they're reviewing at least 30 comments received by Wednesday’s deadline and hope to have a draft order next week for the commissioners to review.