A man in Missouri shot his TV frustrated by digital conversion. When consumer advocates say that the DTV transition poses a public safety problem this is not what they were afraid of. I don't want anyone (who hasn't installed a converter) to lose access to news and information but it's unlikely there will be significantly less of them on June 12 then there were on Feb. 17.
There's always turbulence on the front edge of change and even the most frustrated consumers will be pulled into the future by June 12. Nielsen on the other hand is currently gathering TV ratings data from 25,000 metered households and 1.6 million diaries. That's right. 25,000 digitally, 1.6 million by hand.
In other words, the least prepared, slowest-to-change members of the population will have digital TV or nothing. And Nielsen, the industry standard bearer and currency arbiter, is still using pad and pencil.
Comments