We are now past midnight in the central time zone.

Welcome to the digital television era, come what may…

Some reports of problems are beginning to roll in, but there’s this encouraging development courtesy Cynopsis:

The DTV conversion deadline is here and depending on your local broadcasters some of which may have already made the switch the move to full digital signals from analog will happen at some point today. Individual stations can chose the time of day they will switch and in your market all of the stations could select different times, tho all will be done midnight tonight. To download a break-down of when the digital switch will occur market by market, click http://dtv.gov/FULL_POWER_STATIONS_LIST.xls. Regardless of the time, stations are required by the FCC to have plenty of folks manning the phones for consumer questions. We called several stations around the country yesterday and asked some very basic consumer questions. While some station representatives provided somewhat erroneous information, for the most part the stations were quick to provide accurate answers to our questions and many also suggested we check the FCC DTV website ( www.dtv.gov) for additional information.

Stations are required to provide consumers with assistance over the weekend many are using a recorded response to assist and answer basic questions and then directing callers to the FCC DTV website for more answers. Some stations though, will have extra staff on hand to take viewer calls starting in the wee hours of today and some are doing a countdown to their own digital conversions via their local morning news programs. The FCC is also sending representatives to stations in some markets to monitor calls and questions.

While making these calls we learned something we hadn’t realized — Best Buy electronic store’s Geek Squad is providing free DTV installation for consumers. The Geek Squad will adjust existing antennas; scan and rescan converter boxes to locate the maximum digital broadcast channels available; integrate an existing VCR; and provide guidance on the operation of the converter box. This free service is available until June 30th in 31 states. For more information on this, call the DTV conversion hotline at 877-BBY-DTV9 (877-229-3889) 9a-12m daily. There are also plenty of other local contractors who are offering services for free call your local TV station for names, or check the station website for more information. One station said their calls were not so much about viewers concerned about losing signals but how to hook up the converter boxes. For more information on converter boxes, check out DTV2009.gov.

As we write this, the four month extension on the DTV transition in the United States is nearly finished. Have things improved?

In a word, yes. The number of people who would have been left without television (and possibly media access) would have ranked perhaps as much as a fifth of people. Now, according to the latest figures from Nielsen (and you better take figures from Nielsen with a grain of salt), there are “only” 3.1 million households in the United States. If you figure that there are about four people per house, that comes to more than 12 million people — out of a population of roughly 304 million — about 4% of the U.S. population. Without the delay, to quote current FCC acting chair Michael Copps, the transition would have been a “debacle that makes New Coke look like marketing genius.”

And it’s been more than just the FCC and the National Association of Bastards Broadcasters. Take, for example, MAG-Net, the Media Action Grassroots Network. For the past few months, MAG-Net member organizations have been involved in a socially just DTV transition, which engaged in policy work, established a series of regional DTV assistance centers, and collaborated with retailers who themselves stood to learn a lot of what was going on. I daresay that, pound per pound and dollar per dollar, MAG-Net did more and more effective work than either the FCC or the NAB.

So, yes. It looks like things have improved. Will things still be a disaster? Have we averted a debacle that makes New Coke look like marketing genius?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it.

Amalia Deloney of the Main Street Project out of Minneapolis, reports that there are three categories of problems that still remain with the DTV conversion in the United States.

(1) Problems or delays with the convertor box voucher program. Delayed vouchers, vouchers that expired and can’t be replaced, vouchers that are missing and/or never arrived or got inadvertently thrown out. Hundreds of thousands of people stand to be affected by this.

(2) Technical assistance. Just because you get the coupon and get the convertor box doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to install it, or are able to install it. At the November North Side Chicago FCC town hall on DTV, a blind gentleman spoke up to say that he wouldn’t be able to install a convertor box if he got it, and wouldn’t know anyone who can install it, but that he uses his television as a radio of sorts, and he would like to continue to do so.

(3) Those who are “passed over”. This includes all of those whom all of the outreach failed to contact, those who didn’t know or couldn’t know about the conversion until it actually happens, when the TV set suddently goes offline and there’s a white dot and a passionate demand for an explanation and action. There has been ample commentary online dismissing this class of people as beyond all hope, but like the saying goes, “Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members — the last, the least, the littlest.”.

Stay tuned to this website for developments as they break.

Yes, we know this website hasn’t had a new post in a while (that’s going to change real fast), but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been activity on the DTV front. For example, there’s this recent short film:

Forward from our friend Joel Kelsey:

At a White House meeting yesterday, the three FCC Commissioners announced that the Commission will soon be putting out a request for proposals to help determine how and where to spend the $90 million of stimulus money reserved for DTV education. They emphasized their plans to target low-income consumers that are still unprepared through several new tactics, like walk-in centers. They will be looking at proposals from targeted media markets that will help “search and rescue” those households still unprepared for the transition.

The RFP’s and other information will be made available at www.fedbizopps.gov.

Beginning soon, they will be running a series of focus groups to get under the hood of why people are still unprepared. The focus groups will take place in 7 cities: Richmond, Memphis, Tampa, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Atlanta, and LA.

They also highlighted the need for additional Spanish language support – particularly through their call center operators – because 8% of calls on February 17th came from Spanish-speaking households, even though very few Spanish language stations made the switch in Feb.

In response to this article, the following letter was written and sent — though apparently unpublished. So we publish it here:

To the Times:

Despite ample scrutiny on long-foreseen government problems with America’s planned DTV transition, there has been precious little scrutiny of the commercial broadcasters themselves.

The National Association of Broadcasters donated $1 billion worth of ad time for DTV conversion awareness, but the U.S. commercial broadcast media annually raise some $70 billion in profit from their tax-free use of public airwaves.  More money can and should have been spent on outreach.

Likewise, more broadcast time should have been used for outreach.  Public service announcements comprise just a fraction of a percent of all broadcast airtime, and few PSAs air in primetime.

There are good reasons for pursuing a digital TV transition, but U.S. commercial broadcasters have embarrassed America with their halfhearted actions.  The public should point an accusatory finger at commercial broadcasters should the U.S. DTV transition become a fiasco.

Mitchell Szczepanczyk
Chicago Media Action, and DTVRedAlert.org

So, with President Obama signing the DTV Delay Act the full DTV conversion is now postponed to Friday, June 12, 2009.

200 stations have already gone digital. Close to 500 stations are planning to convert after the original DTV deadline date of February 17, 2009 — but that number could have been larger. The FCC, led by acting-chair Michael Copps (whom CMA and other quality media activist types know personally), have rejected about a quarter of the applications for early shutoff. Moreover, the major corporate American networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) have pledged to stay on analog until June 12.

How many people will totally lose their TV access after tomorrow? There are a number of communities that are going to lose most or all their TV stations, but so there apparently will be some outages and subsequent outcry/backlash. We’ll have to wait for the full assessment to come out.

But the poor infrastructure, the cold-turkey trajectory, the waiting list, the hoarding of boxes, the shortage of boxes, the hoarding of TV spectrum — none of that really changes, unfortunately. Herculean and amazing though the achievement is, all we really did was to delay the fiasco by four months. But getting us four more urgent months can play a role in making a bad situation far better, even if further changes aren’t very “realistic”.

Don’t forget. What’s deemed “realistic” can change, perhaps very dramatically. It’s even bought us four months that we thought we didn’t have. So let’s keep the pressure on.

On January 15, all high-power TV stations in Hawaii went digital. The business press reported this as a smooth result, but an email from the islands suggests otherwise:

Not sure if this even matters but Hawaii made the digital transition in mid-January leaving many households with no television service.  Apparently the digital signal does not bend well in our valleys and canyons.  There is no going back and there are a lot of dark tv’s in the islands.  Guess that’s why our beaches are so nice.  Time to clean the garage and get out the old C&K and Kalapana records for the chalangalang sessions.  All broadcasters in Hawaii are now transmitting in digital.

Aloha.

UPDATE: TVNewsday has this article with more information.

The U.S. Senate has already approved a delay of the DTV transition.

The House voted on the Senate version of a DTV delay bill today, but the vote failed.  (The tally: 258 Yeas, 168 Nays, with 6 absences.)

The measure needed a two-thirds majority (which would be 290 votes, if my arithmetic is right).  There’s a chance a re-vote an be held, sometime next week, or even later today.

Stay tuned…

UPDATE — Details from Art Brodsky at Public Knowledge: “The House leadership put it on the suspension calendar, which is a streamlined way of getting bills through.  No amendments, brief debate, 2/3 needed.  The leadership didn’t think anyone would vote to deprive their constituents of TV.  They were wrong.

The bill will be brought back under regular order, and will only need a majority to pass.  It got 258 votes this time, so that shouldn’t be an issue. “

On the Chicago Media Action website, we posted:

[T]he incoming Obama administration and key members of Congress have brought increased attention to the problems around the [DTV] conversion. One stopgap measure which has gained considerable momentum is to postpone the deadline to buy more time — perhaps to June 2009.

Regardless the debate over postponing the deadline, I should say, the momentum around this proposal is stunning. In the course of about a week, it has gone from “utterly impossible” to “likely to happen”. For three years, media democracy activists have suggested postponing the deadline, but realized that such a proposal would be utterly dead in the water amid a Republican Congress, [Republican] FCC, and [Republican] White House that simply refused to budge on the issue. Indeed, many of us thought that such a deadline would have to have been moved no later than the end of 2007 in order to have any appreciable impact. It is breathtaking the degree this issue has moved to wider public consciousness.

But the question remains: Will the deadline be postponed? Let’s consider the case for both sides and make a fearless Prediction^TM.

REASONS WHY THE DEADLINE WILL BE POSTPONED

1. Obama’s team has called for a delay.
   
2. The incoming and outgoing chairs of the relevant House Committee overseeing the DTV conversion have called for a delay.
   
3. Legislation to delay the deadline is already being crafted.
   
4. There seems to be the political will to update the law as needed.
   
5. The DTV voucher program is now out of money (we’re guessing that the deadline), and pending a funding injection new requests after January 3 for vouchers are being wait-listed.
   
6. Worse, there is anticipated shortfall of convertor boxes — about 2.5 million of them. The saving grace for poor people in the United States that has been touted for years will not have enough convertor boxes as long-promised.
   
7. The four major American commercial broadcast networks have said they don’t care whether or not the deadline is postponed.
   

REASONS WHY THE DEADLINE WILL NOT BE POSTPONED

1. Congress and the new president already have a cubic assload of matters to address on a host of issues — the economy, foreign policy, Gitmo, the legacy of the Bush administration, et cetera, et cetera. Simply put, they might not be able to complete the law change before the shot-clock runs out. And the shot-clock is not negotiable. To postpone the deadline, Congress and the new president must change the law before February 17, 2009 — or the law kicks in to effect.
   
2. The National Association of Bastards Broadcasters, the Consumer Electronics Association, and a number of former high-ranking FCC officials have called against the deadline being postponed — and they do carry considerable lobbying muscle.
   

FEARLESS PREDICTION
The NAB held all the cards during the Bush years in preventing a delay, but have not prevented this swelling of newfound political will on the issue of a delay, and moreover are looking increasingly heartless in their opposition (”The NAB doesn’t care about poor people”), and even stupid (kind of like Terry Bradshaw when he made a live DTV-transition announcement during the pregame to the NFC Championship on Fox).

The biggest obstacle to postponing the DTV delay looks to be the Congressional schedule. If Congress can schedule a law change in the docket and move quickly (which they’ll have to), there appears to be growing political will to act, so it looks like a delay will pass, and since Obama himself has called for a DTV delay, he’d certainly sign a bill if brought to the White House. But the political will and — most importantly — the markedly increased public attention to the issue have changed the calculus. In the light of a relatively quick passage of DTV nightline bill, even with a Republican FCC and a Republican White House, a postponing of the deadline looks to be doable and comparatively easy. Addressing the clusterfuck to come is where things get hard. Really hard.

Prediction: 3-2 odds say the deadline gets moved to sometime in June 2009. Odds aside, we certainly HOPE it will get moved. It will certainly buy time to address some of the biggest problems.