via the National Association of Broadcasters' website
NAB Statement on Nielsen Report of Consumer Readiness for Digital TV
February 5, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC — National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Vice President for Digital Television Transition Jonathan Collegio issued the following statement regarding the February 2009 report by Nielsen Research on consumer readiness for the upcoming transition to digital television.
"Nielsen's measure of 'complete' unreadiness is inflated, because it does not account for people who have not installed their converter boxes yet or those who have coupons but have not yet redeemed them. Currently more than 10 million coupons are active but not yet redeemed, and NAB research shows that nearly 40 percent of converter box owners have yet to hook up their boxes. These viewers may be technically unready in the strictest sense, but they are not completely unready. To get a truly accurate snapshot of consumer readiness, the specific actions taken by these households should be acknowledged."
I wish they’d have just gone through with the Feburary deadline. There’s never going to be 100% readiness. Honestly, i’m getting really sick of waiting.
Another 5 months of the irritating messages droning on about getting ready for DTV? Ugh.
Why didnt they just stick to the Feb 17th deadline? Why??? The gubment seems to equate watching TV with breathing. Nothing will get people motivated faster to get their boxes or hook up cable/satellite/FIOS faster than having their screens go black. Keep extending the deadline and people will simply keep putting it off.
Here the stations will go digital on Feb 17. that’s weird.
Stations have the option of dropping analog transmission before the new June deadline (on Feb 17 or after) if they petition the FCC and are approved. Since I have no idea what hoops the FCC will make them jump through, it may be easy to get that approved or not.
More on stations going for the “early” turnoff. Article notes that, as scheduled, the state of Hawaii dropped analog broadcasting on January 15 and there was no calamity.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/173716-More_Stations_Opt_for_Early_DTV_Switch.php?rssid=20065
Nielsen fudging numbers? Wohoo! Nielsen conspiracy theorist time!!! I do believe that Nielsen may be playing a little CYA on this issue. They’ll have a lot of angry customers – advertisers AND broadcast nets – if their ratings show across-the-board drops come DTV day. Their scapegoat is the viewers who are “completely unready” by their own definition. They’ve already moved sweeps to March to account for the confusion, yes? Now, Nielsen has an even better excuse for ratings confusion – some markets have dropped analog, some haven’t, maybe our panel lost some viewers because we don’t know if they are “dropped” or not, yadda yadda yadda….
Nielsen wouldn’t need to worry about this at all if they correctly utilized their panel, IMHO. Their panel should only be comprised of, at most, 5 or 6% broadcast-only consumers. If they were smart, they would have made sure to get converter boxes to their panelists long ago, to ensure the panel was “completely ready.” Perhaps instead of the nominal stipend that they pay, they could have offered those panelists free converters?
Clutz, only 5 or 6% broadcast-only customers would have been extremely unrepresentative of the actual population. And manipulating their panelists to be ready when they wouldn’t have to begin with would also be unrepresentative. Personally, I assumed that they would have hooked their panelists up with converter boxes, since Nielsen does cover TV repair expenses for their panelists, but if every Nielsen home was ready, the 6-10 million homes that are not would be completely unaccounted for in the ratings. The ratings are not about tricking people into thinking a larger number of people watch than actually do, and if 6-10 million people lose the ability to watch (especially since these people were all watching broadcast only) it needs to be reflected in the ratings. (Of course, from what I’ve read, Hispanic populations are having the hardest time switching over, so Univision may be the hardest hit.)