9 Hours On The Front Line Of The DTV Transition

Will you remember where you were on February 19, 2009?  I will - although the final event was watered-down and has yet to actually happen, that is the day that analog TV broadcasting was to cease in the United States.  In an attempt to lessen the impact on Wisconsinites, Wisconsin Public Television (my day-job) set up a phone bank for viewers of all stations - commercial AND public - to call for tips, advice and information on what just happened.  While nationwide only about a third of TV stations have now turned off their analog signals, in Wisconsin the shutoff is almost total, and that left a lot of people - generally elderly, and many rural - with snow where Oprah used to be.  So they called us, and in a 3-day period we fielded over 1500 calls. 

I spent 9 hours one day on the phones, and talked to about 75 viewers all told.  Some people’s questions were easy to fix - rescanning for channels, or explaining what the yellow/red/white cable should be plugged into - but some were heartbreaking.  There is a lot of wide open space in the northern part of Wisconsin, and unless people have really high-gain antennas with rotators on 50+ foot towers, many aren’t going to recieve any signal at all.  The city of Wisconsin Rapids sits 50 miles south of Wausau, and while people were able to get acceptable (although snowy) analog signals, in digital they are blind thanks to the “cliff effect” - in essence, while an analog signal will fade away to snow over distance, digital will disappear completely if you don’t recieve 50.1% of the bits being transmitted.  Wisconsin Rapids is, literally, “off the cliff.”  And people are not happy about this.  Several of my colleagues reported people in tears, and while that might sound trite to you, think again - a lot of these people are elderly and isolated and use the TV as entertainment, information and yes, even as a companion.  To tell these folks that their TV went away because a cell-phone company wants more 3G spectrum is just sickening to me.

Even more sickening than that is the attitude I see on so many Weblogs, with people (presumably young, male and geeky) spouting off that anyone who isn’t aware or ready for the analog cutoff doesn’t deserve TV at all!  These heartless bastards seem to forget that there are many people out there that either can’t afford cable or satellite TV, or in many cases just can’t get it (cable penetration in rural areas is notoriously low.) 

But, what’s done is done.  The new analog cutoff date - June 12 - will be here before we know it.  I strongly suggest that all of us look around our friends, families and others and ask if anyone is not ready for the end of analog TV.  If they aren’t, help get them ready.  Consider it your good deed for the century.  And maybe the heartless bastards can get out there and help as well.  Maybe it could help them grow some semblance of a heart.

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