Stewart Wolpin

Dumb and dumber – and dumbest
February 20, 2008

It's now T-minus one year to the analog TV turnoff. And the national media has finally woken up to the post-Katrina FEMA-like boondoggle the turnoff is likely to become.

Over the weekend, USA Today posted a story called "Campaign tries to clear up digital TV signal confusion," citing "reports of massive consumer confusion." The reporter names just one such report – a December survey conducted by Consumer Union that other outlets had reported on when the survey results were announced more than two weeks ago.

To recap (and to save you a click), the Consumer Union survey found that 36 percent of those surveyed with a TV were entirely unaware of the turnoff, 58 percent believed that all TVs require a converter box, 24 percent believe that all analog sets will have to be tossed, and 61 percent believed they will be affected.

In addition, on Friday CNN and ABC reported on a Nielsen survey that found 10.1 percent of all households would have no TV service if the turnoff happened now, and the largest groups of these current ill-prepared were Hispanic (17.3 percent), black (12.8 percent) and Asian (11.7 percent).

These surveys confirm what I've been whining about since this plan was first proposed (I'm quickly becoming the Lou Dobbs of the digital transition) – the coupon/converter program is designed more for those who don't need to take advantage of it. Those that are most vulnerable to lose their signals are the least likely to understand that they need to do something, the least likely to do that something, and the least politically protected if they don't. In other words, millions of people will lose their TV on Feb. 18 and their howls can be safely ignored by the powers that be.

But because this week marks T-minus one year and because coupons will start mailing this week, many media sources are beginning to take a closer and critical self-righteous clenching of fists and gnashing of teeth look at the DTV transition.

Typically, as was the case in the reporting of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the mainstream media is two years late and billions of dollars short. When the analog turn-off was signed into law as part of a massive appropriation bill in February 2006, only a handful of tech media reported on it. There was no mention of it at all in The New York Times. Questions about the plan should have been raised by the so-called watchdogs of the public way before the plan became law, but weren't.

Now headlines scream that consumers are confused and maybe the transition and the coupon plan wasn't such a good idea as if this is news. Consumers are confused? Really? Call Woodward and Bernstein!

But the media is merely my handy attention-grabbing scapegoat. After all, who is dumber? The media who has completely missed the analog turnoff reporting boat, the consumer who not only doesn't know the difference between analog and digital TV but doesn't care, or the industry and legislature that assumes consumers do both?

I pick the latter.

The Passover service includes a discussion of four sons – one wise, one wicked, one simple and one who wits not to ask. Tech execs concentrate marketing efforts mostly at the two former metaphorical sons and rarely, if ever, the latter two.

I'm guilty of this as well. I get red in the face whenever a consumer publication editor asks me to define what I think are well-known terms, such as "USB," "480 lines" and "router" (all actual editor questions).

But I should know that in the real world, even the simplest of tech concepts can be confusing. Last year, I attended a poker game at a friend's apartment. This friend is a former highly-placed executive at a major Hollywood studio. He had that night's Yankee game on his HD RPTV. It was obvious (to me, anyway) that he was watching a stretched analog broadcast. I asked him why he wasn't watching the game in HD. He said he was – see, he said, the image fills the screen. I picked up the remote and changed the channel to the high-def broadcast. The expected exclamation of wonder followed.

This column would be way too long to relate other similar incidents, such as when a bond trader acquaintance recently asked me whether he should buy "an LCD or an HDTV."

Okay, so how do we get to those who wit not to ask so that the snow they'll see a year from now will be on the ground and not on every channel of their 20-year-old 19-inch Sony Trinitron?

John Taylor, long-time PR rep for Zenith and now LG, has some great ideas about engaging local civic, charitable and religious organizations to help get the word out to those who don't know there's a word out to be gotten, order coupons to hand out, or actually deliver and hook-up convertor boxes.

It is doubtful, however, that CEA, the NAB or the NTSC will take any further concerted action other than its current multi-lingual online brochures and those passive public service announcements.

It may be up to manufacturers and especially retailers to partner up with these local organizations to reach out to those who lack the digital knowledge. Such civic partnerships will be beneficial not only on an altruistic level, but can help both converter box makers and retailers form longer-term local marketing relationships.

Plus, retailers partnering up with local organizations to get coupons or boxes to those who really need them may give the media something legitimate to report on.

Posted by Stewart Wolpin on February 20, 2008 | Comments (1)