Up until last week, our nation’s television stations were scheduled to stop airing analog broadcast on February 17th.  Consumers who receive television signals over the air or with an antenna will need a converter box or a digital television set to get broadcasts once the transition to digital is made.  The government has been planning this switch for years as going digital improves the quality of TV reception and frees up large amounts of airwaves for other services like wireless data.  To notify the nation of this all-digital transition the National Association of Broadcasters ran an ad campaign that has caused more confusion than clarity for consumers on whether or not they needed a converter box and how to hook them up.  In a classic example of not catering to your audience via an ad campaign, many of the spots encouraged consumers to check out the FAQs on www.DTVAnswers.com .  I’m sure it was this digitally-savvy audience’s first instinct to surf on over there…once they figured out how to get web access.

For those in need of a converter box the government also helped defray the cost of these boxes by entitling each US household to two $40 coupons.  Of course, the easiest way to get the coupons is to go to http://www.dtv2009.gov, but once these consumers get online it won’t do them much good currently.  To date, there have been more than $1 billion worth of coupons issued and there are millions of Americans on the waiting list for coupons as, surprise, the program is currently out of money.  The current economic stimulus package working its way through Congress apparently contains funding for the coupons program and further preparation efforts.  The delay in getting approval may be needed because there is also a concern that the current stock of converters is set to sell out shortly and there will not be more converters in stores until sometime in April.

Now, Congress has delayed the transition until June 12, 2009.  Broadcasters can turn off analog signals before June 12th, but the station must first notify the FCC and viewers before Feb 9th.  More confusion, more scrambling as stations decide if they want to risk losing antenna-only households in their viewing area and risk a ratings decline or pay for two transmitters for the time being.

According to MRI, 17.7% of Americans live in households with only over-the-air TV.  As of this month, Nielsen reports that 5.8 million households are not ready for the transition.  Granted, we’ve known this was coming for ten years now, but for those Americans who have never sent an email or looked at a website, a properly executed awareness campaign was in order.  Instead they got a campaign that lacked a solid strategic core, mixed with improper funding and typical politics, that ended up leaving most more confused than informed.