February 5, 2009 12 Comments
More than 5.8 million U.S. households — or 5.1 percent of all homes — are not ready for the upcoming transition to all-digital broadcasting, according to Nielsen. The Albuquerque – Santa Fe market continues to be the least prepared, with more than 12 percent of households completely unready.
Percentage of Households that Are Completely Unready For the Digital Transition
Click here to read the Nielsen’s entire DTV readiness update.
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Tags: digital television, Digital Television Transition, digital tv readiness, DTV, Nielsen DTV Readiness
[...] to Nielsen, more than 5.8 million U.S. homes (5.1 percent) are unprepared for the DTV switch (Nielsen Wire); the Consumer Electronics Association warns that the recent push back to the DTV switch could [...]
I’d appreciate knowing what your definition of “unready” is. If a consumer has bought a converter box but hasn’t hooked it up yet, is that considered “unready”?
Suzanne,
Yes, that household would be considered “unready.” Once the converter is connected the status would change.
[...] months of preparation, the delay might be necessary. According to a Nielsen Company survey 6.5 Million Americans are not, or only partially, ready for the switchover. Disproportionally [...]
There will always those who are unprepared for transitions, and it’s easy to focus on the few who do nothing in preparation for change.
What is the % an indicator of? Is it # of people with no box and use antenna compared to total people with an antenna?
It would be interesting to see how many of non-cable/non-satellite households are unprepared. I would like to see those percentages.
Denise, Non-cable, non-satellite households are the only ones affected, so that is what the percentages represent. If you have cable and/or satellite connected to every TV in your home, you are prepared. If not, then you’re part of the percentages listed here.
When is the next update going to be published? For effective dates, I see Jan 18….Feb 1 (released 2/5)….
Does that mean 2/15 is next, released 2/19??
Are households who either do not have a television at all or do not use it to watch broadcast TV included in this percentage?
There probably aren’t 5 million Amish households, but including them in the percentage that are not “ready” for DTV would be rather disingenuous.
Nick,
Good Question
The first part is that all of these percentages are based on TV homes – not all homes. So we are actually saying that 4.4% of TV homes are unprepared.
There are some TV sets that are only used for watching DVDs or video tapes. And we do acknowledge that some of the homes that we classify as Completely Unready may never become ready – or care to become ready. That does not change the fact that pre-switch they are capable of receiving a broadcast signal and post-DTV switch they will be completely unable to do so.
In reality there are often people who claim they “never” watch TV, but might on rare occasion they might still tune to check on a breaking news story or storm watch or some such thing. They could never watch and even be in Nielsen samples representing people like them. (And since Nielsen hooks meters to DVDs, VCRs, video games, etc., we will still be able to track how they use the sets – even if they don’t watch “regular” TV – broadcast or cable.
They could watch *analog* stations, although I understand that availability varies by region. I’ll have 14 analog stations still broadcasting, and that includes a couple analog repeaters of full power stations.
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