Today marks “D Minus 14″ and counting.  Two weeks until the “Big Day.”  One fortnight until the end of analog television broadcasting.

A  “soft test” on May 21 went fairly well in Indiana with most of the state’s full-power analog TV stations participating in the Federal Communications Communication (FCC) – “suggested” event with each station broadcasting three 5-minute announcements that day only on their analog channels and directing viewers who were seeing those announcements to call a national FCC phone bank.

The Commission reported that they received a total of 1,074 calls from Indianapolis residents.  That seems low considering the coverage the announcements got that day and the fact that an estimated 35-40,000 TV households  are still considered “DTV unready.”

In Indianapolis, residents were having the following problems:

25.14% failed to request converter box coupons
24.57 % had converter box coupons ordered that had not arrived or were expired
9.71% had weak or spotty signals
8.0% were having reception problems
7.43% didn’t understand the instructions for the converter box
4.57% reported their antenna didn’t work or wasn’t connected
3.43% had problems receiving channels or call sign
2.29% had to rescan the converter box to receive digital signals
1.14% had converter boxes that did not work.

We are planning to sign off and shut down our Channel 6 transmitter shortly after midnight on June 12. The sign off will be a special, nostalgic announcement  of a station that just celebrated its 60th birthday.  It will feel like the old days when station went off the air overnight. 

All day Friday, June 13, we’ll have a special telephone bank with specialists to work out the remaining issues of folks that are having reception issues and just then figuring it out.

 Should be an interesting Friday.

As promised, here’s a follow-up to my blog on Indy 500 ratings with information on the national ratings for the race.

Nationwide, ABC’s coverage drew 3.9% of U.S. TV households.  Locally, the audience is nearly quadruple that number.

The national number is down 13% from last year, and down 40% from coverage four years ago. It’s the lowest national rating since the 500 got live start-to-finish TV overage in 1986.

Sunday’s race on RTV6, which was delayed to prime time at the demand of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was up 21% from last year.

I was fearful that this year’s broadcast of the Indianapolis 500 might start to show signs of audience shrinkage.  This year the Time Trials and run for the pole position weren’t on ABC and were almost non-existent on the start-up cable network Versus, which took over the rights to broadcast those events.

But, my worry was for naught.  This year’s delayed broadcast of the race starting at 8PM drew an audience in Indianapolis 21% larger than last year.  The pre-race show at 7PM grew 65%, more than double, from 2008.  And RTV6’s coverage of the events from 11AM-1PM leading up to the race posted ratings  50% higher than those from last year.

Perhaps the great weather put everyone in a racing mood.  Maybe it was all the activities around the centennial celebration of the opening the Indianapolis Speedway.  Probably it had a lot to do with ABC’s fantastic coverage of “the greatest spectacle in racing” which gets better every year and is one of the best events to watch in high definition.

Indianapolis usually has the highest rating for the race in the country.  Makes sense.  When that comes in, I’ll let you know how that went this year.

Friday marks “T minus 21″ – three weeks until the much anticipated shut off of all the full power analog signals across America.  And, certainly much anticipated in Indianapolis.  All the stations here are ready to switch off those old transmitters and begin broadcasting exclusively in digital.

Tomorrow, all the stations in Indianapolis will, one more time, conduct “soft tests” of what the world will look like without analog television.  It’s one more push by the Federal Communications Commission to wake up the public who, for some reason, hasn’t picked up the fact that there will no longer be a channel 4, 6, 8, 13, 20, 59, etc. after June 12.

Each of the local stations, cooperatively, will run a message simultaneously at 7:25AM, 12:25PM and 6:25PM giving analog viewers one more jolt.   The Nielsen folks say that about 3.5%  of the population is unprepared.  After tomorrow, I expect it will be about 3.499%.   With as much publicity as America’s television stations have done over the past year or so, everyone has to be aware.  And those that are unprepared today will remain unprepared on June 12.

On that day, three weeks away, WRTV will, as will all stations, be prepared to take inquiries and direct those needing help to continue watching us to the proper resource.  Why not, it’s in our best interests to make sure everyone can watch Channel 6.

Today was the presentation of the annual “Upfront” when the ABC  Television Network unveiled its line up for 2009-2010.  The audience in New York was principally the advertising community.  The schedule is heavy this year on comedies - a good sign.  Comedies do well when the economy is sour and folks are looking for things to laugh about.

In past years, the network’s fall line up was presented to the affiliates gathered at multi-day lavish, star-studded affairs.  Those days are over.  These days, we’re relegated to watching the presentation being made at the Avery Fisher Center at Lincoln Center from a conference room here in Indiana.

In the old days, you were wined and dined (think noshing on sweet and sour shrimp while chatting with Robert Mitchum). You stayed at the Century Plaza in LA or the Plaza in New York. No longer.  It’s a new day.  It’s via satellite.

The really good news is ABC is bringing back its strong dramas, including the just-launched Castle.  And, the network is adding six new dramas–The Deep End, Eastwick, Flash Forward, The Forgotten, Happy Town and V. The latter is a “reimagining” of the NBC series from the 1980s about the arrival of an alien race called The Visitors.  Some will hit the fall schedule; some will be introduced later in the year.

Among returning shows, ABC picked up comedies Scrubs and Better Off Ted, as well as the aforementioned Castle and alternative series True Beauty.   The Christina Applegate comedy Samantha Who? didn’t make the cut.

ABC picked up  four comedies, including Cougar Town, Hank, The Middle and Modern Family.

• Cougar Town  stars Courtney Cox as a recent divorcee re-entering a dating world that favors the young.
• Hank  stars Kelsey Grammer as a corporate titan who is forced to reconnect with his wife and kids when he loses his job.
• The Middle,  a sitcom about a middle-class family in Middle America (Indiana) stars Grammer’s erstwhile Back To You co-star, Patricia Heaton as an Indiana mom of three trying to make ends meet. .  Back To You was on Fox last year.
• Modern Family takes a mockumentary approach to the family sitcomwith Ed O’Neill as the patriarch of an eclectic, blended family.

And, keeping its bets on the reality genre, ABC schedules Shark Tank, from Mark Burnett, to lead off Tuesday evening.   It challenges would-be entrepreneurs to submit their business plans to a panel of high-powered tycoons in the fields of real estate, infomercials, technology, fashion and venture capitalism.

Here’s ABC’s 2009-2010 schedule:

8:00 p.m.          “Dancing with the Stars” (two-hours)

10:00 p.m.         “Castle”

8:00 p.m.          “Shark Tank”

9:00 p.m.          “Dancing with the Stars the Results Show”

10:00 p.m.        “The Forgotten”

8:00 p.m.          “Hank”

8:30 p.m.          “The Middle”   

9:00 p.m.          “Modern Family”

9:30 p.m.          “Cougar Town”

10:00 p.m.        “Eastwick”

8:00 p.m.          “Flash Forward”

9:00 p.m.          “Grey’s Anatomy”

10:00 p.m.        “Private Practice”

8:00 p.m.          “Supernanny”

9:00 p.m.          “Ugly Betty”

10:00 p.m.        “20/20″

8:00 p.m.          “Saturday Night College Football”

7:00 p.m.          “America’s Funniest Home Videos”

8:00 p.m.          “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

9:00 p.m.          “Desperate Housewives”

10:00 p.m.        “Brothers & Sisters”

Looks like a good fall season.