Fears Raised Puerto Rico May Run Short On DTV Gear, but Supply Ample Now
Some fear that Puerto Rico won’t have enough DTV converter boxes after June 12, they said. Their concern is that residents of the island, where a greater proportion of viewers rely on over-the-air TV than in any state, may make the transition late and it will take time to get supplies from the mainland.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Our survey of six Best Buy, RadioShack and Wal-Mart stores in the territory found ample supply now, and FCC and NTIA officials and broadcast and retail executives said there’s no shortage and little threat of one. That could change, said Nixyvette Santini, a Puerto Rico regulator advising the FCC on DTV.
Reassurance late Wednesday from an FCC official helping coordinate the island’s transition that supplies are ample left Santini “less worried about the moment of the transition,” she said. “Still, I feel that we can’t stop worrying after the transition” because “we might be only one market without boxes” among many, she added. Santini is on Puerto Rico’s Telecommunications Regulatory Board and the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee. “I'm not going to drop my defenses after the transition, because we may have some people wondering where the boxes are.”
“There’s a justifiable concern that there might not be sufficient boxes available,” said Gloria Tristani, a former FCC commissioner who’s also on the advisory committee. “Everything that goes to Puerto Rico has to go by ship” and that takes time, she added. “There are a lot of pieces that have to be coordinated.” One of her worries is the “disproportionate” share of households that receive only terrestrial TV. The figure is 45 to 59 percent of the population, according to figures from the FCC, the NAB and broadcast officials.
The NTIA isn’t aware of any shortages in Puerto Rico of boxes eligible for its $40 coupons, a spokesman said. Across the U.S., the redemption rate for the vouchers continues to fall, agency data show. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Thursday “urged Americans” to apply for coupons by Monday to get them by June 12, when the 927 U.S. full-power stations still broadcasting in analog will go all-digital.
“There are lots of boxes” in Puerto Rico, and the four FCC officials helping the territory switch to digital have found no shortage, said a commission spokesman. After checking stores there, the commission found that Wal-Marts in 11 of the 13 municipalities with the stores have boxes. The chain will receive 25,000 digital converter boxes this month and the same number in June, he said. All RadioShack stores have them, and so do at least half of the island’s Best Buy outlets, the spokesman added. FCC officials have visited more than 100 senior centers on the island, spoken with municipalities “all over the island” about the transition and worked with broadcasters, he said.
Seven percent of Puerto Rican homes may be unprepared for DTV, according the FCC spokesman and Jose Ramos, the general manager of WAPA-TV San Juan. That’s down from 17 percent in March, Ramos said. Each day, the station, WKAQ-TV San Juan or WLII Caguas run a half-hour video that the stations made, showing viewers how to install converter boxes, he said. The three stations send their engineers to answer DTV questions, including to malls on weekends, and there are “lines of 400, 500 people everywhere we go,” Ramos said. “Stations are certainly going above and beyond” in Puerto Rico, said an NAB spokeswoman.
At five of the six consumer electronics stores we polled, employees said they had more than 50 boxes and all said they were doing brisk sales of the devices and antennas, which are also plentiful. A Best Buy in Bayamon had almost 300 digital converter boxes and is getting 200 to 300 more a week, a store supervisor said. A RadioShack in the same city, near San Juan, has 86 boxes and expects 500 more next week, two employees said. “Puerto Rico has been a hot spot of attention for quite some time now and I think that is one of the reasons you do see supply on the shelves now,” said Chris McLean, the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition’s executive director. “Let’s get through June 12 and then worry about the post-June 12 period. But I think there will be plenty of supply.”
Though the volume of DTV coupon orders with the NTIA spiked May 21, when several hundred stations in about 130 markets simulated analog cutoffs (CD May 26 p3), demand the next five days was only slightly higher than a week earlier, agency data show. The NTIA said it accepted orders for 73,500 coupons a day May 21 through May 26, compared with 69,800 daily May 14 through May 19. The analog soft cutoff, which the FCC asked stations to do, will be the last nationwide one, agency and industry officials have said.
A bit more than two weeks before remaining full-power stations go all-digital, the coupon program had $364.4 million in the till on Tuesday for new orders. That’s enough for just more than 9 million coupons, the NTIA said. Slightly more than 6.4 million coupons were active, but redemptions continue to decline, for all homes and specifically for those that rely on antennas for TV reception. The redemption rate for coupons that expired the week of May 22 after having been sent to over-the-air homes fell to 43.7 percent, the lowest since the program began in January 2008, the NTIA said.