Comments on: Analog shut off test darkens New York TV stations for 2 minutes

New York City TV stations temporarily switched off their analog antenna feeds today, previewing what's scheduled to happen permanently in February 2009.

[cyberDJ-2038765336053745013836]

So...what was the affected public's reaction to this test?

[AnthonyNYC]

This is what I was saying should be done all along, this way only people affected are bombared and confused by the warning doomsday commercials we all have to watch on tv.
Target just those affected, excellent!
And as we get closer to Febuary, they should do it every hour and not only that but also transmit an instructional video showing exactly what the new devices look like and how to easily hook them up.

The only problem I forsee is the older people whi already bought converters which also tune into analog stations (some converters do both), they will continue to see the warnings when viewing the analog stations thru their new converter boxes, LOL
There is always a glitch to every plan, but overall this should work very well to inform people.

[fdunn3]

One Station in San Antonio did this about a month or so back for 1 minute during the 5:00PM, 6:00PM, and 10:00PM news. Just as was done in NYC it was preceeded by an explantion of what they were doing followed by a countdown and then an announcement that the test was over (for those not affected by the outage).
Since then they have had a ribbon Marquee at the bottom of the screen every so often on all the channels indicating the cut-off date, DTV telephone numbers and websites.

Now they are concentrating on the DTV antenna annnouncements.

I guess they waited in NYC because it has a much larger audience but I agree with the poster above that this should have already been occuring to "wake-up" those that are still blissfully unaware.

[xraydude]

I'd bet they'd get 100% conversion overnight if they ran the tests during Wheel of Fortune for 5 minutes at a time. Maybe even a short test during the final puzzle.