Final DTV Post for a While...

UPDATE out of Lexington: We reported that WTVQ would shut their analog side down as well.

They did, and here's the status report straight off Kentucky.com:



The switch to digital television has begun, and if Lexington is any indication, it hasn't been as painful as some might have thought.

ABC affiliate WTVQ-36 was the only Lexington station to turn off its analog signal at midnight, but by mid-day Wednesday, it had received fewer than 250 calls from viewers.

“It's pretty much about what I expected,” said General Manager Chris Aldridge.


The article also notes WYMT-DT which had received only THREE calls by the close of business Wednesday.

The original item is below:

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We have a few final items to cover in the DTV Transition First Wave tonight.

First, a report about WSAZ 3/Huntington-Charleston, WV, which while not in Cincinnati, OR Kentucky, still can reach some viewers in the Cincinnati DMA's eastern outskirts.

That station was one of 14 Gray Television stations that switched Monday night. And the response, according to this article (Hat Tip: Rich Emery), was pretty doggone positive with not very many viewer calls reaching that station directly. (One Huntington/Charleston area station, WOWK-DT 13, didn't have analog from sometime late last year onward, and the FCC gave it the green light to go all-digital.)

On the other end of the spectrum, on the other hand, is Cincinnati's own WSTR-DT 64, which is on digital 33.

That station had received hundreds of calls by mid-morning according to our friends at the Enquirer.(See here.)

It looks as though there were at LEAST 1,000 people who lost WSTR in the switch for whatever reason.

And up the road in Dayton, Rich Emery pointed us to this article from WHIO-TV which reports the Miami Valley's DTV conversion rate was the fastest in the nation during what the station called their "DTV Action Weeks". The rate there dropped from 6.4 percent to 4.59 percent, making it a 1.81 percent drop and the fastest in the nation according to Nielsen.