Nearly 500 Stations Want To Make Feb. 17 Digital Switch

[Tirconnell]

FCC Will Make Transition Determinations; 191 Stations Have Already Changed Over

Between a quarter and a third of all TV stations want to go ahead and pull the plug on analog Feb. 17, which could make for what is effectively a staggered start to the DTV era, depending on how many the FCC allows to switch on that date.

A total of 491 TV stations have told the FCC they want to make the transition to digital Feb. 17, according to a just-released list from the commission. Another 190 have already switched or are doing so before the original hard date.

It is now up to the FCC to let the other stations know whether they will be permitted to transition or not.

Any station the FCC decides can't go early--because it is not in the public interest--will receive the news "promptly," says the commission's public notice. However, the agency did not give a date as to when it would inform the stations. It will have to be prompt -- even if the FCC lets them know today Feb. 10, they have only one week to change their plans.

Congress has passed a bill to extend the hard date to June 12, though President Obama has yet to sign it into law. The president's delay has media and regulatory camps scratching their heads, since the administration was pushing for quick passage of the bill given the looming deadline.

The FCC has already released the rules implementing the bill, with language that finesses it in case something happened to prevent its signing; the FCC could not wait for the president's signature and meet the deadline.

The agency had required broadcasters to tell it by midnight Monday whether they wanted to go ahead with the Feb. 17 cut-off of analog signals the government had mandated before changing the deadline last week.

There are not guarantees, though for the early change. That is because the FCC has put a public-interest caveat on the move, saying they will have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. For example, the FCC would think twice before allowing all the major stations in a market with a high percentage of analog-only viewers to pull the plug Feb. 17.

The FCC and some members of Congress have urged stations to do their own public interest, weighing the effects of making the switch-over on Feb. 17 and act accordingly.
A number of major station owners, including Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC and Gannett, have said they won't go early, while others have said for economic or scheduling reasons they have to because the government has been telling them for years to make the move.

"We'll try to work with broadcasters to make this as seemless as possible for everybody," says FCC commissioner Robert McDowell, "but we do need to protect consumers, and part of that is to make sure that there is some analog signal in each market."

So, some broadcasters may wind up having to stay on even if they don't want to. "That remains to be seen," he said," but hopefully it will all be voluntary."

[snitzhel]

great info...........

[Tirconnell]

But Organization's Web Site Also Points To June 12 Under Coupon Program


The National Telecommunications & Information Administration at press time was sending a mixed message about the DTV transition.

The organization continued to tell Web surfers under the "Tell me more about the digital TV transition" heading on its dtv2009.gov Web site home page that "at midnight on Feb. 17, all full-power TV stations in the United States will stop broadcasting in analog and switch to 100% digital broadcasting."

That comes five days after Congress voted to move the DTV transition hard date and will be news to the hundreds of stations that, on the advice of the government, aren't pulling the plug on analog as they had planned.

Elsewhere on the site, under the "coupon program update" section, it points out that the date is postponed to June 12.

The group's site provides information on NTIA's DTV-to-analog converter box coupon program, whose distribution problems helped prompt the decision to move the date in the first place.

An NTIA spokesperson was not available to comment as to why the message had not been changed to point out that many stations won't be ending their analog transmissions on that date.

Although at press time President Barack Obama had not signed the date-change bill, the FCC finessed the wording of its implementation order on the bill so that it could proceed with collecting information from broadcasters, including how many were, in fact, planning to pull the analog plug Feb. 17.

If NTIA had not yet updated its site, the National Association of Broadcasters' DTVanswers.com site modified its message the same day the bill passed to point out that Congress had moved the hard date to June 12.

The FCC's DTV site has also changed its DTV transition message, perhaps best reflecting the degree to which the hard date has softened to a range of "may's" "sometime's" and "expected's."

"On Feb. 17, some full-power broadcast television stations in the United States may stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and begin broadcasting only in digital," the FCC site said. "The remaining stations may stop broadcasting analog sometime between March 14 and June 12. June 12 is the final deadline for terminating analog broadcasts under legislation passed by Congress and expected to be signed by President Obama."

[SatelliteGuy1982]

Great post......