Falling Off the Digital Cliff


As we know, the transition from analog to digital TV has been delayed from February 17 to June 12. The delay is meant to allow extra time for consumers to get their converter boxes and for the government to implement its transition programs, including the coupons for those boxes and the recycling of the thousands (and maybe even millions) of TVs that will be thrown away.

One issue that is still unresolved is that of the "digital cliff." In a nutshell, a digital cliff means no TV signal (regardless of whether you have a converter box) for those in rural areas or who live a great distance from a digital broadcast station. With analog, a weak signal means low quality, but a weak digital signal means a blank screen.

The digital cliff has not been widely reported, and it's an issue the FCC has not, according to many, addressed effectively. At DTV.gov, for example, you can find information about antenna adapters, but there are no diagrams or maps that explain how a DTV signal works or how far the signal travels.

"At this point, our estimates are that 5.1 percent of U.S. TV households are unprepared, which is about 5.8 million households," says Anne Elliot, a vice president at The Nielsen Company. Elliot says that a DTV signal travels in a different kind of contour from analog and either finds a receiver or doesn't.

Nielsen defines as "unprepared" a household that does not have any TVs capable of receiving a digital signal after the transition. Nielsen uses a representative sampling of 35,000 households to derive its estimates. The company issued a readiness alert in January stating that the elderly with more disposable income are more ready for DTV than those under 55

Nielsen also found that the top six least-prepared cities were Albuquerque, Houston, Tulsa, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Austin, and Memphis. The most prepared market is the Hartford-New Haven area of Connecticut, because of the proliferation of cable TV access in that region. Of course, Nielsen does not track small communities such as Ames, Iowa, or remote locations in Montana or Minnesota. Households in rural areas will likely not get digital reception after the transition even if they own a converter box, which could cause a problem for retailers trying to sell DTV antennas.

"Our advice for people in rural areas is to buy an upgraded antenna and to test digital reception now, before the transition," says Mary Diamond, an FCC spokesperson. She declined to elaborate.