A year of digital TV: who won the transition?

Remember the DTV transition? The nationwide switch from analog to digital over-the-air television broadcasting crossed the finish line a year ago this past Saturday. So why do we feel like we're asking something akin to "Remember gopher?" or "Remember the BBS days?"

That's probably because after all the sturm und drang over the event subsided, there was remarkably little interest in what happened to the millions of people and almost 1,800 full-power TV stations impacted by the change. Who would have predicted such a blasé attitude back then? For two years the preparation for the Great Trek was accompanied by one cliffhanger moment after another.

Expect disruptions

First there was all that concern that the nation's 19 million or so analog-only couch potatoes weren't ready to make the leap. That worry went into the red zone after everyone discovered that the Department of Commerce's program to subsidize the purchase of converter set-top boxes ran out of money. So just two weeks before the old February 17 transition date, Capitol Hill extended the deadline to June 12, then replenished the DoC program via the White House's stimulus bill.

But even though over a third of the nation's stations easily made the switch by March, anxieties continued to surface like popup ads. Then FCC Chair Michael Copps warned that, despite the delay, everyone should expect "disruptions" following June 12. DTV watchers worried about retailers running out of converter boxes. When that crisis passed, they fretted over whether the new contours of digital TV signals would drop thousands of viewers after the switch.

So, in the end, how did we do?

Works okay with me

One answer comes from the Retrevo consumer gadgets search service, which did a quickie one-year-later survey last week of 200 of its visitors. The company found that most sailed through the affair pretty smoothly. Fifty-two percent reported themselves "unaffected" by the transition. Another 41 percent bought a conversion box. Nineteen percent splurged on a new digital TV. Thirteen percent fixed the problem by subscribing to cable or satellite service. And 11 percent solved the mess with a new antenna.

Only 12 percent of the group reported "worse reception" following the switch, Retrevo notes. As for converter box buyers, 72 percent said their machine "works okay or fine," 17 percent disclosed that it "never worked well," and another 11 percent "never tried to hook it up" or "never got it to work."

Bottom line: Fifty-one percent answered "yes" to the question "Overall, do you think the DTV transition was a good thing?" Twenty-six percent said they didn't know. Twenty-three percent said no.

Here's how Retrevo interpreted those numbers. The "big winners" were TV makers, service providers, and retailers, the company observed. "Best Buy, Amazon and other merchants probably did a brisk business in converter boxes and new TVs while Comcast and DirecTV signed up a bunch of new subscribers. Even antenna makers probably made quite a few extra sales."

But Jane and Joe Consumer "probably got the short end of the stick," Retrevo added, "shelling out cash for new gear and, in some cases, ending up with worse TV reception."

Skewing younger

Another perspective comes from the Nielsen rating service, which tracked DTV preparedness for years prior to June 12. Late last year Nielsen published an extensive survey of the transition's legacy. By the week leading to June 12, the number of "completely unready" TV watchers had dwindled to 2.5 percent of all US households, Nielsen concluded. And by the end of August, three-quarters of these homes had made the switch through a converter box. Another 18.2 percent bought cable TV. 7.5 percent subscribed to direct broadcast satellite.

By that point, many of the remaining unready sets "were typically found in rooms that are not focal points of television viewing, such as secondary bedrooms, kitchens and other locations," the company observed. "The location of these sets corresponds to the fact that they were used less for television viewing."

And contrary to popular perceptions, a substantial percentage of these unready households were populated by younger rather than older TV viewers. "Surprisingly, the age profile of unready homes skewed younger than total US figures. More than half of viewers from completely unready households were under the age of 35." By September, 99.4 percent of US households could receive digital TV signals.

As for the full-power TV stations themselves, they only lost 8 percent audience share following the digital shutoff. And Nielsen attributed two to three percent of that decline to the loss of viewers that typically comes with summer.

How did Nielsen interpret all this? "With super sharp high-definition programming and the ability to show multiple standard definition digital programs simultaneously, digital programming offers many advantages over analog television for viewing broadcast TV." Viewing trends will soon return to their 2007 and 2008 trend levels (which were very high), the company predicted, "a clear indication that homes are adapting to the new digital landscape and continuing to find their TV content."

Amen to this, declared the National Association of Broadcasters. "It's been a remarkably successful transition," NAB's Kris Jones told us, "considering the enormous challenges associated with replacing or attaching a converter box to more than 300 million television sets across the US. Broadcasters are offering viewers the most-watched HD programming available on today's television lineup, along with more niche programming choices for viewers through digital multicasting. Best of all, it's free."

Immense harm

But a less-rosy perspective came to us via technology analyst J.H. Snider, who posted an opinion piece on Ars in January 2009 which made the case against extending the transition date in the first place. Snider argued that over-the-air broadcasting is obsolete anyway. Cable and satellite offer far more efficient ways to receive video content, and IP video represents the future.