Senate passes bill to delay digital TV switch

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Sir Terrance

Many TV stations are not ready either. My close friend is the Director of Engineering for a ABC owned station in San Francisco. She says all of the ABC owned station have significant blackout areas within the broadcast region.

Lots of TV broadcasting markets have areas where reception is bad or non-existent, even for the existing analog signals running at full power. In my viewing market there's numerous areas that don't get good OTA TV signal coverage. People living in those areas are stuck with getting cable or satellite TV.

Originally Posted by Sir Terrance

It was estimated that in the SF area, about 70-100,000 people would lose their signal entirely, and that is for ABC viewers alone, not to mention the other 7 stations that broadcast off of the same tower. That is a significant chunk of revenue lost because the FCC and the SF city council dragged their feet through this conversion. The city council of SF just approved the antennae changes on the broadcast tower TWO WEEKS AGO!!!

Why are all those stations broadcasting from just one tower?

I live in a much smaller TV broadcast DMA (Wichita Falls, TX - Lawton, OK). Like so many small markets with huge areas of rural landscape to cover the local TV stations often have to install signal repeating transponders in other counties to improve the coverage of their signal across the viewing market. Why aren't the stations in San Francisco doing this to reach those hard to cover areas? It sounds like there is more than enough viewers in those blackout areas to justify the cost of some signal repeaters.

The San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose megalopolis is by far one of the most populous, not to mention most affluent, areas in the nation. It's one of the top 10 TV viewing markets in the US. It would seem like those stations would have had more resources to get their DTV situation properly addressed and have it done at a far earlier date.

Instead, it sounds to me like some little TV stations out here "in the sticks" have been better prepared for the Feb. 17 deadline than network owned TV stations in the cosmopolitan world city of San Francisco.

The only excuse I see for Bay Area TV stations not being ready is signal interference between numerous analog and DTV signals crowding the broadcast spectrum. However, those big TV stations have more resources available to get organized collectively so they can all do their various changes in broadcast channel assignments and power levels without jamming the broadcasts of each other.

Originally Posted by Sir Terrance

Here in the bay area, I know of no station that has gone to full DTV power, or had any plans on going full power before the analog cut off date.

That only makes TV stations in San Francisco seem like they didn't have good long term planning. Our local NBC station is running its DTV signal at full power and the FOX affiliate will change its DTV signal to full power during the first week in February. The engineers at those stations found it more prudent to go full power early rather than wait until the last minute to discover any possible bugs in running the signals at full power.

Originally Posted by Sir Terrance

The only station I heard complaining about this change is the PBS stations here.

PBS relies heavily on public funding and has a very tight budget. It's estimated that PBS stations across the country could lose $22 million over extra utilities costs if they had to continue powering both analog and digital signals until June. Some stations are simply not going to be able to do that.

Originally Posted by Sir Terrance

Nobody wants to lose viewers, especially now that advertising revenue has taken such a hit.

I think that concern is trumped by the giant-sized electric bills that would come from powering analog and DTV signals simultaneously, especially if both are run at full power. Additionally, the viewing demographic advertisers are trying to reach have been prepared for the DTV change. Viewers in low income brackets and elderly viewers account for most of the estimated 6.5 million people not yet ready for the switch.