Wilmington Transition Issues: Programming Converter Boxes
Viewers Were Aware Of Change, Not How To Adjust Equipment
By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 9/9/2008 4:37:00 AM
The majority of trouble calls made by Wilmington, N.C. residents dealing with Sept. 8 digital TV transition test were prompted because local viewers had not properly programmed the converter boxes they bought, according to data collected by a group of university students monitoring the market.
Eleven communications majors from Elon University of North Carolina are helping with trouble calls to local broadcasters and at the Time Warner Cable call center in Wilmington, which is the test market for the national digital transition next Feb. 17.
The students handled 130 calls after the noon transition, in which most of the callers were advised to adjust the direction of their antennas or program the signal converter box the consumer purchased. Their research showed that the base message -- that analog broadcasting would cease -- did reach the vast majority of the market.
Only one caller expressed ignorance of the digital transition. But they didn't get, or didn't understand, that their purchased converters would need to be programmed to identify the new digital content.
According to the students' research, 50% of the callers were over-the-air only television viewers. Also, 75% of the callers (representing over-the-air and cable or satellite viewers with at least one over-the-air receiver) said their digital converter was not working. Students advised 53% of callers to try adjusting the direction of their set-top antenna or to have the converter box scan for channels.
The majority of callers, 59%, were female, the students reported. The trouble callers ranged in age from 38- to 84-years-old. The students did not report a median age of the trouble callers.
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