[SBE] Reno's DTV Experiment

[chscherer at everestkc.net]

Thanks for the report, Adrienne. Any other markets or regions have test results to share?

Chriss

+++++++++++

>From   Adrienne  Abbott <weathertop at charter.net>  

Sent  Monday, January 12, 2009 10:46 pm 
To  'sbe member discussion mail list' <sbe at sbe.org>  
Subject  [SBE] Reno's DTV Experiment 



We went through our first station analog shutoff today and the good news is that so far, it appears most people in our area are prepared for DTV. Overall, KOLO-TV, the ABC affiliate in Reno, received very few calls today about their early analog turnoff. Very few calls were taken at their call center and website, and very few calls went into the call center set up by the Nevada Broadcasters Association for today’s analog soft-turn off tests. Altogether, there have been maybe a thousand calls for the entire state, some of which have already been resolved by return call to viewers who simply needed to re-scan their converter boxes. Other viewers have antenna problems that they will need to resolve and still others told us that they had not yet received their government coupons and didn’t have their converter boxes as a result. (I haven’t received mine yet.) We had virtually no calls after 4:00 PM PST when Oprah normally airs, which indicates to me at least, that the Oprah fans
 took the DTV education campaign to heart. We will know more tomorrow after we (NBA) begins drilling through the data by zip code, but at this point it appears that only 40 percent of the calls were from Northern Nevada or Reno area viewers while 60 percent were from Southern Nevada, where all the stations are still operating an analog signal. All in all, it appears to be good news tonight.

Adrienne Abbott
Field Engineer
Nevada Broadcasters Association
nevadaeas at charter.net