Audio Video News

The dark-rumped petrel was responsible for a milestone in DTV history last week. To avoid disrupting the nesting patterns of this endangered bird species, Hawaii became the first state in the union to turn off analog television signals, thus entering the age of DTV at least a month earlier than the deadline for the other 49 states.

Petrels like to build their nests near analog TV transmission towers on Maui, and they like to do it in February, so dismantling the towers on deadline would have disturbed their habitat. To avoid that, Hawaii got a jump on the transition and dismantled the towers last week, before the arrival of the birds. Analog signals were discontinued on Thursday, January 15th. The effort was coordinated by KITV, Hawaii's ABC affiliate, with the blessing of the Federal Communications Commission.

So what happened?

FCC call centers received 800 calls the first day, and 400 on the second, reported the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The three primary issues, as expected, were loss of signal, questions about set-top adapter setups, and requests for the adapters. Add those 1200 disrupted households together and it appears that less than a tenth of a percent of the state's total population, of approximately 1.3 million people, was affected, though presumably lesser numbers of calls will continue dribbling into the call centers.

That's a pretty positive outcome for the largest (so far) implementation of the DTV transition in the United States. The second largest was in Wilmington, North Carolina, in which less than one percent of the region's viewing households called for help.

While these limited operations may not precisely reflect the outcome when the DTV transition rolls out across the U.S., the miniscule numbers do suggest that the disruption will be minimal, even if the transition concludes on its currently scheduled deadline of February 17th. All eyes are now on Congress to see if the deadline will be extended for another three months.