The Ring
We’ve been answering the phones this week during the 6 and 7 PM News on NBC 17, and the phones have been ringing non-stop. Instead of posting a new blog each day, I’ll use this post to summarize the calls we’ve been getting.
Monday evening I invited Chip Johnson from Garner TV and Appliances to help answer phones. Chip is the “High-Tech Redneck” and is really up on his home theatre knowledge. I’ve been telling you that you can build your home theater one pice at a time, and Chip would be a great resource to guide you toward your finished theatre, or man-cave as I prefer to call mine. They have all the pieces you need for a great experience right in your living room.
We got a lot of calls from the Rocky Mount area and an unbelievable number of calls about coupons. The NTIA reported they are getting coupons out in 9 days, but here with only a few days, or hours to the switch, there’s no way to get a coupon in time. Most have one digital TV in the house, but forgot the other sets in the bedroom and kitchen, or simply put it off until it’s too late. Did you know not everyone has Internet access? I lost track of how many calls I took, but it was one after the other, and again, my kind of people. Sweetest and nicest folks you can ever talk to. I wish I could spend more time talking to some of them. Surprisingly to me, very few calls with reception issues. I assumed that would be the bulk of the calls, but most of them just needed reassuring they were ready.
Tuesday I brought in Casey Tart, Manager of the Time-Warner Customer Care call center. Cindy Keene, Director of Public and Government Affairs for Time-Warner also came by and answered the phones. Why would I invite the biggest competitor to a broadcast TV station to answer our phones? Simply, they are the largest supplier of our signal to homes in the market. Not everyone can climb on their roof to deal with an antenna, and apartments do not allow gangly looking antennas to hang on their balconies. Cable offers a lot of solutions and packages to suit everyone’s needs. They are offering a Broadcast package for $7.95 per month for the first year. If you are having issues with your antenna, that’s a great alternative and gives you 12 months to resolve your problems, or upgrade to a different package. If you haven’t gotten your coupon, a new TV, or have antenna issues, right now you need to be going with “plan B” and try to get by. They have a low cost viable solution on their website.
The reception calls came in tonight. I got a couple of calls from near the Virginia border, which is one of those areas in-between all the markets, and may be difficult if not impossible, to get over the air TV. These callers have a satellite service, but wanted to know if their second set might be able to get the digital signal especially when analog is spotty now. My advice is to call your satellite provider to see if they have a special package to add those additional TV’s. Most of them do offer some assistance in such cases with special packages for multi-room systems.
I do want to stress again, everyone using an antenna will have to re-scan for channels Friday afternoon. In several cases, I talked some folks how to set-up the converter box on the phone. Lot’s of folks forget the TV will be parked on channel 3 or 4 when the box is on. You can’t take these things right out of the box and punch in channel 17 and see anything. It has to scan to find the channels first!
Wednesday, after chasing different problems caused by lightning in the station, Wayne and I manned the phone bank, and later Photographer Dan West came to help us out. Several had some interesting antenna issues, especially one man that has a great signal, until the wind blows. It sounds like he has some trees in the area rocking back and forth causing problems. He reported it on all his digital channels, which is also uncommon as trees usually affect one or two channels at a time. Some of these problems will improve after Friday.
As always, we have the nicest and sweetest callers watching our station, and it’s a pleasure to help any way we can. We have actually helped several folks set up their converter boxes, but with the phones ringing constantly, it’s hard to devote as much time to everyone that needs it. We’ll keep trying though. We do have a number you can call during the day and we’ll try yo help you as soon as possible. You can always get help by calling the FCC at 1-888-CALL FCC.
Thursday night Fred Pace from Clear-Channel radio here in Raleigh will join us to talk HD radio, and their digital transition.
Friday Daniel Miron from Dish Network will be back. He helped us out in December when we held the phone bank and I’ve been test driving the TR-40 DTVPal converter box.
The uncensored behind the scenes action is being streamed on my back-channel on the video tab of this blog, MYNC.com keyword DTV, and on Livestream.com/mvnn! Check us out live between 6 and 8 PM!
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