Not Necessarily The Model City

“I have to wonder if Wilmington was the best test bed for the digital conversion. Even combining the city population with the three counties that encompass the Metropolitan Wilmington area, the entire population is only about 374,000. The 14,000 over-the-air households comprise under 5% of the viewing public. This doesn’t seem to be a good gage for a conversion in say Philadelphia, Boston or Los Angeles — older cities where you potentially have a higher percentage of non-digital television watchers.”

Richard Keller, TV Squadwww.tvsquad.com

A Portent of Storms to Come?

“I have been saying for almost two years now that the federal government has not done enough to educate Americans on the switch to Digital TV. Additionally, the government has made it too difficult for people to buy the converter boxes that will enable people to watch TV on their old sets.

If people didn’t believe me before, yesterday’s results in Wilmington should be the ultimate persuader. The government spent a small fortune on a PR campaign to alert area residents and they still weren’t ready. … Next February’s nationwide transition to digital could become the Katrina of technology, creating widespread panic and chaos throughout the nation.”

Phillip Swann, TV Predictions.comwww.tvpredictions.com

Tuning Into the Antenna Issue

“A fair number of residents are going to have to invest in better antennas, an additional cost that none of the information being widely disseminated even hints at. Given that over-the-air viewing is the only way many low-income people can afford the most affordable form of entertainment that’s available to them, that’s not particularly good news. Neither is the fact that the Wilmington area is geographically flat, which means that reception problems are likely to be more severe in many other areas.”

Bob Colby, Switchover Scenariosdtvswitch.blogspot.com