Plenty of Rabbit Ears Still in Use

Ars Technica reports:

This is one of those statistical news items that different parties will react to with varying degrees of optimism or dismay. The bad news, if you are so inclined, is that 5.7 percent of all U.S. homes are still completely unready for the digital TV transition. That's according to the Nielsen TV ratings company's latest data. At this point, 6.5 million households have analog television sets that will receive no full power broadcasts after February 17.

But the good news is that since the metrics company's last survey, 1.3 million more homes have reported readiness; the unprepared percentage was 6.8 as of December 21. Back in May, Nielsen classified 9.4 percent of households completely unready. So the progress is slow, but it's steady.

What does "completely unready" mean? The media company defines the phrase as "a household that has all unready sets"--no digital tuners, no converter set top boxes, no satellite or cable service--basically just a plain old rabbit ears TV and that's all. Nielsen has also been counting "partially unready" households. They're residences which have at least one ready set, but also at least one unready set.

Back in May, 12.6 percent of U.S. households were partially unready. Now 9.24 percent fit into that category. Clear improvement there as well.

Youthful disinterest

The latest stats indicate that white households report 4.6 percent total unpreparedness, with African-American, Hispanic, and Asian homes coming in at 9.9, 9.7, and 6.9 percent, respectively. One phenomenon that continues to hold steady is that young people show much higher levels of complete unreadiness than the late middle aged and elderly. 8.8 percent of households under 35 are totally unprepared, as opposed to just 4 percent of those over 55.

That trend has held steady since May. "Males and Females ages 18-24 are the demographic groups that would be most impacted if the DTV Transition occurred today," Nielsen advised in the survey it issued back then.

The most unready city in America is the Albuquerque-Santa Fe market area, Nielsen says, with 12.24 percent of households reporting complete unreadiness. The most ready is Hartford/New Haven; there less than 2 percent are completely unprepared. Los Angeles sits somewhere in the middle at 7.66 percent.

The rate of preparedness would improve a lot faster if Congress would get off the dime and get the National Telecommunications Information Administration's set-top box coupon program refunded. That program offers consumers coupons good for $40 towards a set top box that converts analog sets to digital. But it ran out of money at the start of this month and has at least several million people on a waiting list.

For the most part, Democrats in the House and Senate have focused on getting the DTV date moved up to June 12. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have been leading this campaign, but last week their efforts were blocked by skeptical Republicans in the Senate.

On Thursday, Waxman, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, issued a statement on behalf of his "Digital Television Transition Extension Act of 2009." Waxman insists that delay of the date represents "our only hope of lessening the impact on millions of consumers. Without a short, one-time extension, millions of households will lose all television reception."

But the comment also concedes opposition to the plan, and so Waxman has put off House debate on the bill "to give the Committee more time to assess the implications of the Senate action."

It's unclear how much more time advocates of a postponement realistically have. February 17 is less than four weeks away.