HTNut

55,000 phone callers flooded the FCC help line after a nationwide soft test yesterday. The test was conducted in 125 broadcast markets.

A soft test is a simulation of what unprepared viewers will see when the Digital Transition occurs. During the test consumers TVs will be interrupted, (only those receiving analog signals) to warn them that they are not prepared for the transition on June 12, 2009.

Is this a foreshadow of what's to come on June 12, 2009?

From: Record 55,000 Callers Ring FCC's Digital TV Help Line | The Wrap

1inxs

Thats not bad considering approximately 3% of the US is unprepared.
Just wait for the outcry when they're unable to locate a retailer with a CECB in stock. And even louder when they find out they'll be without TV for 6 weeks waiting for their $40.00 Government coupons. In the back of my mind I'm still not confident there won't be another DTV transition delay.

staticMHZ

and when they find out they can't get good enough reception

bicker

Indeed, 55,000 is a big win. Critics were expecting there to be a substantially higher number of problems.

Beyond that, I have to wonder how many of those calls were because of screw-ups at the stations. I checked two channels during the soft test, here. (I am, of course, fully prepared.) On WSBK I got the "you are prepared" notice, no problem, but not on WFXT! They did something wrong, during the short period of time of the soft test, and so no one got any confirmation of anything, even those folks who are fully prepared, and live in Needham, in the shadow of the antennas.

Those still unprepared after over a year of the industry, broadcasters, and the government working so hard to ensure that everyone had every opportunity to know that they had to do something to be prepared, deserve whatever they get. They have to have hotlines, to take the telephone calls, but folks calling the hotlines should be calling with the attitude, "What did I do wrong? Can you please help me understand what I need to do?" rather than expressing an outraged sense of entitlement.

There won't be. If you remember the first delay, we were waiting for a specific date in January after which they couldn't even begin to try to initiate a delay. Essentially, it has to do with Congressional procedures, built in delays, plus the ability for the opposition party to impose a certain amount of delay by referring the legislation into committee. I think it is 24 days. I'm pretty sure that time has passed past which it is now too late to initiate another delay.

Besides that, there isn't anyone, whatsoever, in Congress or the administration, who has shown even the slightest interest of picking up on this and advocating for another delay. To do so would be pretty stupid, actually, because they'd be forced to admit that the first delay didn't do any good -- that most people unprepared on February 17 are still unprepared (perhaps because most of those folks are simply not inclined to take any action until they have no choice).

bicker

I just looked up the chronology. There are two ways bills go through the Senate. The fast track requires suspending the Senate rules, and that requires more votes than the first delay had (and of course, there is even less support for a second delay). So the only path would be the standard process, which requires going through the Senate Commerce Committee, where any Senator can impose a week-long delay (which is what happened last time, and surely would happen again). Given all the other parts of the Senate procedures, and then the Joint Resolution procedures, this means that the bill has to be introduced at least 25 days prior to the transition date, or it will not be possible to be passed by Congress until after it is too late.

Even if it wasn't too late, there are indications that the Republicans have enough votes in the Senate to block passage entirely, either in the vote itself, or via filibuster.

Also keep in mind that there is are several companies who have paid the government hundreds of millions of dollars to begin offering service using the spectrum that will be freed-up by the DTV transition, most notably Qualcomm. While Qualcomm was sanguine about the original four month delay, it is likely that they will file suit in federal court and will be successful in obtaining an injunction against the government, should it try to delay the DTV transition again, since the government is clearly in breach of contract and an additional delay would definitely show sanctionable bad faith.

Aaron62

I am surprised that we haven't seen lawsuits popping up already. All of the planning, engineering, and possibly marketing dollars spent on getting that part of the frequency on February 18th (or shortly after) pushed back 4 months. There had to me extra unjust costs because of the delay forced on Qualcomm (and others).

bicker

Qualcomm asked for considerations in four cities. I suppose whatever they were offered satisfied them with regard to the four month delay. However, clearly they had to delay full deployment of MediaFLO and that cannot continue with impunity.

Piggie

Still the soft tests didn't show the real story to begin June 13th. When there are flash cuts back to VHF. Those in cities where everything right now is UHF, think they are ready. But then when one of the networks does anything from cut power, move towers farther away, switch to VHF, or all three rescanning buttons will be broken off the converters with no results.

Then they will find they need to climb the roof, pay some one and I bet there is scalping after that date to put up a new antenna.

As a kid in Tampa, we got a new channel 38. We had one of the few sets in the neighborhood that would pick up UHF (a lot of sets had VHF only tuners). I played around hooking things to the UHF screws in the back until I saw a PSA they did on building a loop with a wire. I built one and we lived near it and were set. But we didn't have the new channel for weeks.

When the Bithlo tower crashed in 1973 ?? or about, we lost 3 of the 5 channels in Orlando for a LONG time. WDBO, now WKMG, still had their old transmitter and antenna set up at their studio tower but WFTV and WMFE were SOL.... for months........

We lost PBS in Gainesville in the 1980s when their tower crashed.

No one cared much. We lived without it until they fixed it.

Seems now a 12 second glitch is the end of the world.

Wait till the next big tower crashes or just wait till June 13th for a lot of folks. They will learn to do without TV, ain't that hard to do.

Piggie

It would seem, if they still confirm the address, why don't they just send out converter coupons in email?

Oh, yeah, it's the government, and this was started by the previous admins that used typewriters. Never mind.

TonyT

I'm betting that only a portion of the affected analog TVs called in. To the ones that didn't call, they probably figured their TV was just fine once the analog signals came back on. This won't be the case on June 12th.

Of course I'm just speaking hypothetically.