Satellite : Martin Addresses Digital Cliff Effect

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During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the digital TV transition, including the recent single-market switch to DTV in the Wilmington, N.C., market, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin took on concerns about the so-called digital TV cliff.

When speaking about the recent transition to digital TV in the Wilmington market, Martin told the Senate panel Tuesday that relatively few consumers lost their broadcast channels as a result of the DTV "cliff effect." While analog TV pictures degrade gradually in outlying areas, viewers may lose their picture with digital TV broadcasts, and that loss has been called the digital cliff.

The FCC chairman had estimated that less than 1 percent of all viewers would need a new antenna in order to avoid the digital cliff effect. Data from the Wilmington transition suggested a similar estimate, Martin said.

Martin reiterated past comments that most calls the FCC received on the Wilmington switch were technical in nature, and that very few calls came from consumers who did not know about the digital TV transition in the North Carolina market. Martin also said commission staff was able to resolve almost 90 percent of calls about issues with converter box issues.

"Broadly speaking, gaining a better understanding of the challenges being faced by consumers after the real switchover in Wilmington, is enabling us to better focus our messaging and consumer education tools," Martin said in his testimony. He added that consumer education efforts would need to better instruct consumers about how to effectively hook up converter boxes and the need to re-scan those boxes to find local DTV signals.

Lawmakers continued to voice worries about the coming national transition, set for Feb. 17, 2009.

"While federal agencies and industry have stepped up their efforts, I continue to be concerned that they are not fully prepared for the flood of coupon requests and calls that we can expect just before and after the transition," said Daniel Inouye, the Hawaii Democrat and chair of the Senate Commerce Committee.