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February 17th has finally arrived, and in a way, this signifies the beginning of the end for analog broadcast television. Congress and the President have moved the analog cutoff date to June 12th, but due to the tremendous planning that has gone into the February 17 date, approximately one third of the major broadcasters have decided to go ahead with their plans as originally scheduled. A quick run down of the numbers is as follows: In the "final allocation" list released by the FCC on March 6, 2008, there were 1,814 broadcasters scheduled to shut down analog broadcasts on February 17. This list only includes "major" high-power broadcasters, and does not include low power stations, Class A stations, translators, boosters, or other types of licensed TV transmitters. On February 11, 2009, President Obama officially signed the DTV Delay Act into law, which extended the cutoff date until June 12, 2009. The new law does not prohibit "early" shutdown (before June 12), and the FCC acknowledges that it would be difficult for some broadcasters to change their February 17 plans on such short notice. New guidelines from the FCC allowed some broadcasters to proceed with their original February 17 plans, but others would have to be delayed in order to avoid channel conflicts and to serve the best interests of consumers. In a report released on February 16th, the FCC indicated that 220 broadcasters (12%) already made plans for an early transition prior to February 17, and an additional 421 stations (23%) will go ahead with their original February 17 transition. This means that by this morning, 641 stations (35%) should be done with their switch to digital. Out of those 641 stations, about 147 of them (23%) have indicated that they will also operate an analog transmitter in "nite lite" mode. These transmitters will serve as a "pointer" to more information about the digital conversion. These channels might have limited programming value, but they will continue to be signals occupying the airwaves, nonetheless. The remaining two thirds of broadcasters will continue their full analog and digital operations. Many of them have indicated that they will keep their analog broadcasts going until June 12 in the spirit of the DTV Delay Act to help the remaining unprepared consumers make the transition to the digital era. We've updated our databases to reflect these latest changes so that the online Signal Analysis tool will depict today's transmitter environment to the best of our knowledge. We'll also retain the analog records for those stations operating a "nite lite" transmitter since these signals might cause adjacent- or co-channel interference, and should also be checked for signal overload conditions if they happen to be very close. The Signal Analysis reports will reflect these changes immediately. The online coverage maps and downloadable Google Earth coverage maps will take some time to re-process, so they will be updated in due course over the next few weeks. As always, if anyone has any corrections, updates, questions, or comments, please let us know. |
