On the digital TV conversion, there’s good news and bad news.

First the good news: consumer awareness of the digital television transition is at an all-time high.

Now, the bad news: many over-the-air households are slow to take the steps necessary to continue to view television when analog signals disappear next February.

This news comes from a recent survey taken by the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS.)

As of May, 62 percent of over-the-air households said they would opt to buy a converter box or digital television, compared to 28 percent in November 2006.

But, the majority of the 8.8 million over-the-air households who said they would buy a set-top converter box to continue to receive free over-the-air television have not done so.

Among all television households surveyed, only 9.2 percent said they requested a coupon from the government to help defray the cost of a converter box. Of those requesting a coupon, 64.4 percent said they received the coupon. And, 54.2 percent had redeemed the coupon. Only, 38 percent of those who purchased a converter box with the coupon have installed the box.

About 70 percent of over-the-air households said they know what they need to do to continue to view television after the transition. That’s 30 percent who will wonder where TV went on February 18.

The APTS study also found that as the transition date nears, fewer over-the-air consumers said they would sign up for cable, satellite or telecommunications service to receive digital television, while more are inclined to buy a converter box or digital TV set. Those that said they would sign up for a paid service had dropped from 29 percent in November 2006 to 12 percent in the May survey.

The study was conducted by research firm Centris in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

Here’s a good idea. Let the smaller mom and pop grocery stores sell digital-to-analog converter boxes that are eligible under the government’s coupon program.

Right now, the use of coupons in purchasing the boxes is limited to “big box” retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy. One of the big issues on the horizon is the loss of television in rural areas that aren’t served by cable or satellite.

This week, National Association of Broadcasters President-CEO David Rehr sent a letter to the National Telecommunication and Information Agency’s Meredith Attwell Baker stressing that allowing grocery stores, especially those in rural areas, to carry converter boxes would ensure more viewers have easy access to upgrade their television sets to digital.

He was concerned, he said, because while “many larger grocery stores may qualify under current procedures, I am concerned that many ubiquitous grocery store chains do not.

“Particularly in rural areas,” Rehr continued, “we need to make certain that stores convenient to all households will be able to participate in the converter box coupon program. In areas where there might not be a large consumer electronics outlet, there will certainly be grocery stores. I believe that an accommodation should be made for grocery stores, and that at a minimum information on NTIA’s program and its waiver criteria should be made available to stores, especially those in rural areas.”

Good idea. But it makes too much sense. It’ll never fly.

(On the headline: no disrespect intended but I couldn’t let the opportunity go by to do a word play on the famous Variety headline about the lack of interest in rural communities (at that time) on motion pictures)

Looks like the cable and satellite folks may not benefit as much as thought in the post-analog TV world.

In a recent study by the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS), more than 40 percent of current over-the-air households prefer to receive free, over-the-air digital television by either purchasing a converter box or digital TV sets, rejecting signing up for pay television as a way to receive the digital signals.

Roughly 43 percent of over-the-air households indicated they would buy a converter box or purchase a digital TV between now and when the transition takes effect February 17, 2009, compared to only 12 percent who would sign up for a cable or satellite service, the survey found.

Still, APTS says, 25 percent of Americans said they “Don’t Know” what steps they would take, and 19 percent said they would “Do Nothing.” Of those who said they would “Do Nothing,” 17.6 percent of those households said they would postpone or wait before they take any action, if at all.

The subsidy program to help underwrite the cost of converter boxes has received millions of requests for approximately 2.8 million converter boxes since registration for the program began on January 1, according to published reports.

After February 17, 2009, owners of analog TV sets will have to obtain a converter box or subscribe to cable, satellite or other provider to view TV broadcasts which will be available only in digital format.

Also, revealed in the study is that , while more Americans are aware of the transition to digital television, most remain unaware as to why the federal government is mandating the change to their television viewing. Seventy-seven percent of those consumers who are aware of the transition did not know why the federal government has ordered the transition. As a result, the APTS survey found that only 18.7 percent of respondents thought the government was on the “right track” with the transition.

“It appears that the government’s positive message regarding the reasons for the transition has fallen on deaf ears,” according to APTS President and CEO John Lawson.

The study results are based on November 2007 survey of 1,153 households conducted by a Fort Washington, Pennsylvania research firm, CENTRIS.

In less than 48 hours, more than a half million people requested more than one million coupons toward the purchase of DTV-to-analog converters, according to National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) spokesperson Todd Sedmak.

The requests were coming from every state in the union, according to Sedmak. He said almost all were applying for the maximum two coupons per household. At this point, anyone can apply for and get a coupon.

That million-plus total was from online and phone orders. No requests have been received via snail mail yet, Sedmak said, and there were no figures on any faxed orders to date.

Ordering, as noted in my previous blog entry, can be done principally online or by phone. I guess some folks are faxing requests and maybe mailing them in. At the end of the ordering process applicants are informed that the coupons will not be mailed until Feb. 17. That is one year before the DTV switch date. It’s also the date on which acting NTIA chief Meredith Atwell Baker says she is confident that there will be converter boxes on store shelves.

The process assumes they have analog sets that will need the converter boxes, but they may also have other TVs that can either tune digital signals or are hooked up to cable or satellite systems that will convert stations’ digital signals for display on analog and other TVs. I use the word assume. I’m guessing a lot of folks applying don’t need them and the coupons may find their way into a secondary market.

We did a news story on the coupon process and are getting folks calling the station to request coupons. This is the demographic with limited attention spans.

With the NTIA given enough money by Congress to subsidize a total of 33.5 million coupons, at this pace, all of the coupons could be claimed before the first ones hit viewers’ mailboxes at the end of February.

But once the number exceeds 22.25 million coupons, the NTIA will have to dip into a second pool of money for the rest and limit them to only households that do not subscribe to multichannel-video services like cable or satellite. How they will do that isn’t clear, at least to me.
Owners of analog-only TVs receiving over-the-air signals will need converter boxes to receive a TV picture starting Feb. 18, 2009. I may have already said that in an earlier blog.

I’ve been talking about this for some time. And now the day is here. Starting today, you can apply for coupons good towards the purchase of converter boxes that will allow you to watch digital signals on your analog TV. But only until the end of March,

Via a toll-free hotline and a website, the United State Commerce Department today began accepting applications for coupons worth $40 off a no-frills converter box. The toll-free number, (888) DTV-2009 is staffed by live operators who take requests in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and four other languages. Applications also can be filled out online at www.dtv2009.gov. According to the agency in charge, the application process is open for 90 days, until March 31.

Boxes like these will become a necessity in a little over a year when television broadcasters will cease broadcasting in analog and move exclusively to digital. Older analog sets will become useless unless hooked to one of the boxes or some other source that converts the digital signals to wok on those older sets. Cable, satellite and other carriers will do that.

But if you’re one of the 26 million households in the United States that only receive over-the-air TV, get in line. You’ll probably be joined by millions more that may want the option for emergencies or power outages when cable and satellite transmissions are down. Each household is eligible for two coupons, regardless of whether it has cable or satellite service.

The $1.5-billion program is designed to ease the major change coming on February 17, 2009.

Those boxes are expected to be available starting next month at more than 14,000 government-certified retail outlets, including Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart stores. They will be priced at $59.95 to $69.95, before the coupon discount. The coupons will expire 90 days after they are issued to assure they don’t go unused.

After the first $890 million worth of coupons are distributed (to anyone), the federal government will allocate an additional $450 million in coupons, but only to households that rely on over-the-air signals. The rest ($160 million) is for administrative costs.

Although there is enough money for 33.5 million coupons, the National Association of Broadcasters has estimated there are as many as 70 million TVs hooked up to antennas. That includes extra sets in homes with other TVs hooked to cable or satellite. Many of those sets can receive only analog signals, although sales of high-definition TVs, which include digital tuners, have soared in the last two years.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the Commerce Department agency running the program, has contracted with IBM to run the program.

The NTIA has certified 11 brands of converter boxes from eight manufacturers, including Zenith and Magnavox, as eligible for the program. To keep the cost down, the government is certifying only boxes with limited capabilities, not with other functions such as digital video recording or playing DVDs.

The program — the biggest change in broadcast TV since the advent of color — will free up airwaves for new wireless phone and Internet services and public safety agencies . It will also deliver clearer pictures and additional broadcast channels.

The coupon program is a major part of the government’s transition to digital television. But many members of Congress have criticized the way the Bush administration has handled it. and

The Government Accountability Office said in November that there was “no comprehensive plan or strategy to measure progress and results” of the transition. A poll this fall by the Association of Public Television Stations found that although public awareness of the digital TV transition was improving, 51% still had no idea it was happening.

The federal government plans to ramp up its efforts this year. NTIA has only $5 million for public awareness, so it has been working with other government agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as advocacy and community organizations, to spread the word. Among them is American Asoociation of Retired Persons (AARP), which is concerned that the elderly will have trouble dealing with the transition.