Of course the government will spin the non-event as validating their genius in postponing the analog cut-off from its original February 17 date, but based on what happened with the nearly 1,000 stations that switched in February, had the entire nation gone at the same time it would have been a non-event then as well.
A Hearst Television spokesperson says the analog shutoff was a non-event in Boston, Hearst's largest market. Call volumes in the remainder of the Hearst markets, including Orlando and Sacramento, were similarly without catastrophic incident. "We haven't seen greater than anticipated call volume," says the spokesperson.
A LIN spokesperson said the switch was "smooth," with around 100 calls per station. Same story at the 10 Meredith stations, says VP/Director of Engineering Joe Snelson. The Meredith markets, including Atlanta and Las Vegas, saw between 50 and 375 calls yesterday, not including the calls made to FCC hotlines and call centers. "Overall, our group would classify this as a non-event," he says. "If there's any takeaway from yesterday, it's rescan, rescan, rescan."
After a WCPO-WXIX call center was "bombarded" yesterday, according to WCPO engineer Greg Reams, the calls slowed to a manageable, though hardly insignificant, number today. Reams says the center got 1700 calls in the first 24 hours, and another 400 as of 10:15 today.
For Meredith, a possible spike in calls yesterday evening, as viewers got home from work and tucked into primetime viewing, did not materialize. Snelson says his phone did not ring last night; nor did he awake to a cavalcade of anxious emails today.
read the rest at Broadcasting & Cable.
Another B&C article notes that the New York call center received 10,941 calls out of a metro area population of 18 million. Thank goodness we waited those extra 4 months!
I tried to check what the call volume was like at the phone bank we had set up, but I didn’t manage to. And we won’t be having one on Monday, so I guess no one is expecting it to be too bad. (But my market is one of the top ones in the country in terms of digital readiness.)
I don’t know- a LOT of people didn’t seem to realize that they had to rescan, myself included until I looked online.
Michael, I understand there are lots of blocking and tackling issues around the transition (like rescan and what cable to hook where, etc.), but my point is how were they any different in June than they would have been in February?
lots of problems in los angeles with having to rescan, media center had old frequencies had to manually add channels, could be troublesome for most people
There’s a flaw in the logic of this article’s premise. Can people who don’t get the digital transition successfully *use* a modern phone?
“Where’d my tv programs go? Let me make a phone call – wha?!? Where’d my rotary dial go? What’s with all these buttons? I can’t figure this out. Let me go outside and = wha?!? Where did all the pay phones go? Forget this, I’ll just drive down to the station and – wha?!? Where’s the hand crank to start my automobile?”
What the television stations *should* be bracing for is a flood of letters to the station – or at least a flood of postage due notices, as many of the letters will likely have been mailed with 2 cent stamps. *If* this doesn’t come to pass, then the transition can be declared successful.
I was with my mother on the day of the transition, having taken her to a specialist doctor out-of-state.
Mom: “Aww, we’re going to miss the digital transition.” (I think she was expecting chorus girls and lasers)
Me: “Wouldn’t it be funny if nothing happened during Y2K, but after the digital transition, satellites start falling out of the sky?”
Even my mother managed to navigate the digital transition, and I had to instruct her repeatedly that no, one does NOT “pre-heat” the microwave.
It’s June so less people watch TV, less shows missed.
It’s also warmer… I don’t know Bill. lol
was the switch today
daniel, the analog cut off was yesterday (6/12) for the remainder of the stations that hadn’t already switched earlier.
Sadly I have re-scanned repeatedly and where I used to get about a dozen HD stations over my ATSC tuner, I now get zero. No idea what happened.
It looks like Nielsen Media Research won’t be releasing ratings for the period running Friday, June 12th through Thursday, June 18th until Friday, June 19th! At least according to a few sources:
http://www.movieweb.com/news/NE83988hjaXaac
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2009/06/orlando-magic-game-5-ratings-have-been-delayed.html
Doghouse, those accounts are at least a bit incomplete. Nielsen is still releasing some ratings, just look at our site, but perhaps not *final* ratings (which we would usually get on Tuesdays), or certain detail numbers (which we may or may not ordinarily see).
Also, local market ratings are being held, which specifically affects the Orlando market pretty heavily with regards to the game, and since that’s an Orlando paper you linked, it could be referring to that.
Edit: Oh, and I checked in with the front desk today to find out what the call volume was on Friday. There were five people manning phones and they each averaged around 40 calls from noon to 9 pm. This was in one of the top markets in terms of readiness. They had the lines set up through Sunday.