A Storm of Change
From www.dtv2009.gov:
“The greater Wilmington, North Carolina area will make its transition to digital broadcasting on September 8, 2008. Starting at noon on September 8, the following TV stations in the Wilmington area will broadcast only digital signals.
- Channel 3 WWAY ABC
- Channel 6 WECT NBC
- Channel 10 WILM CBS
- Channel 26 WSFX FOX
- Channel 51 W51CW Trinity
WUNJ channel 39 (PBS) will continue to broadcast both analog and digital signals. W47CK Channel 29,(MyNetwork TV), will continue to broadcast its analog signal after September 8. Wilmington, NC is a test market for the shut down of analog broadcasting which will occur by June 12, 2009 throughout the rest of the country.”
That’s pretty cool to be first, but if you own property on the coast, have you made sure you are ready for DTV? Lots of people here in Raleigh own property down there, either for rental or recreation purposes, and either way, it needs to be digital ready now. Wilmington, NC was picked because it is very much like most TV markets, with a majority of homes with cable and satellite, and should be a great test market.
However, in the middle of hurricane season, it seems a bit dangerous to me. TV is still your best resource for information in an emergency. A major storm is hitting South Florida today, and will likely track towards our Outer Banks in some form, either a full blown hurricane or Tropical Storm, and it may bring up some issues getting information out.
That battery powered TV you’ve only used when the power goes out? Might not work. I’m sure the major News stations have worked out a simulcast agreement with those low power stations remaining on analog, but low power TV dosen’t reach very far even in analog, and few even have generators in case the power fails.
Mobile Handheld technology will likely be approved next year, which will be a great benefit in this type of situation. This technology will allow your cell phone or PDA to pick up DTV signals free anywhere you are, even in a moving car. It is pretty awesome what it can do, and will be a benefit in the future during a major disaster.
I know you may have H.D.A. and only care about feeding the High Definition evil monkey on your back. That should only be a problem with entertainment programs. News and life threatening situations are things we take seriously in broadcasting, and so should every viewer. Even a simple crawl alerting viewers of a severe storm or tornado warning, will cause an HD addict outrage if it is sunny outside of their house. We can now run crawls on HD without switching down to SD, and as a matter of fact, we are now down-converting that HD crawl onto the SD streams. The HD stream is in the process of becoming our main program output, as opposed to the “normal” path the signal went through since the beginning. DirecTV and Dish Network will switch exclusively to our HD signal next month, and center cut down-convert it for SD. Same for cable, and our major concern has been being able to put emergency information on that stream.
Whether you heed the warnings, or assume a station is crying wolf, is up to you. We will tell you a severe thunderstorm is coming, and show you where it is. We can’t stop you from going outside on the roof to tweak your dish or antenna if the signal fades from the storm or wind rotates your antenna. Addicts will do crazy things to feed the addition. Just be a little patient, the storm will pass, the sun will shine, and TV will show you what happened.
I’m sure the stations in Wilmington are running through every contingency they can think of. They have survived many storms over the years, and it will be interesting to see how they manage a “school of hard knocks” real-world test from a major storm. They get to write a new chapter in the DTV book, and I hope it is titled “What we did right” as opposed to “Oops, we didn’t think of that!”
Update: I did read today they will not shut off their analog transmitters for one month, but put up a slide informing viewers how to get the DTV signals. They can revert back to analog if a major storm does occur, so they are covering all the bases. After February, we will not have that option, so you still need to get ready now!
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I’ve been reading along for a while now. I just wanted to drop you a comment to say keep up the good work.