When a transmitter goes down, digital switch can come early
Days before beginning its spring pledge drive, pubTV station WNIT in Elkhart, Ind., lost one of two klystron tubes in its analog transmitter, leaving the station with roughly 20 percent of its broadcast power and a snowy picture as it prepared to plead its case to viewers.
That seemed plenty bad, but the worst was still to come: Less than three weeks later, the other expensive tube kicked the bucket, too.
“The phone calls went from, ‘What happened to your picture?’ to ‘What happened to your station?’” says Mary Pruess, president.
By the time WNIT’s second klystron failed March 12 [2008], station brass had already determined that it would cost roughly $75,000 to replace just one of its UHF transmitter’s relatively uncommon tubes, in a transmitter that will go dark forever when analog telecasting ends 10 months from now.
Engineers had no luck finding used replacements or some other less expensive option.
The solution? Abandon analog broadcasting entirely and launch an elaborate press and publicity campaign to accelerate the digital TV transition for the nearly 20 percent of its audience that relies on over-the-air analog TV. For the majority of viewers, who get the signal via cable or satellite, WNIT’s shut-off has gone largely unnoticed, Pruess says.
In opting for a so-called “flash cut” to digital, WNIT joins at least 10 public TV stations currently broadcasting exclusively in digital, according to the Association of Public Television Stations. These include transmitters in statewide networks, such as KETZ in El Dorado, Ark., part of Arkansas ETV, and repeater stations such as KNMD in Santa Fe, N.M., which extends the reach of Albuquerque’s KNME.
Another pubTV station chose to stick with analog a little longer when it faced an equipment crisis. After its klystron failed in December, WCTE in Cookeville, Tenn., opted to lease a tube for approximately $2,000 a month so that it could maintain an analog signal in the rural area where it’s the only broadcast TV station (see earlier story).
But as the Feb. 17 end of analog TV draws ever closer, the expense becomes harder to justify.
In October, Smoky Hills PTV in Bunker Hill, Kan., went digital-only in part of its viewing area by shutting off five analog translators serving some 42,000 viewers in the northwest part of the state. One of the 20-year-old contraptions had already died, and two more were circling the drain, says Larry Holden, c.e.o.
The station prepared for the shut-off last summer by building a new $2.8 million digital transmitter, financed by state funding and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service, in the middle of a placid prairie roughly 200 miles from its main headquarters. Station staffers had to chase away antelope before starting construction, Holden says.
“There are seldom heard discouraging words around that transmitter,” he quips. Indeed, he adds, the station has heard from only about a dozen people since the switch-off, even though it’s a region with low cable penetration. “And this was before there were converter boxes in stores,” he says.
The Indiana station’s timing is better in that regard: The feds started giving away discount coupons to subsidize the purchase of set-top digital-to-analog converters in January, and consumer awareness of the DTV transition has been growing.
In weighing their options, WNIT managers checked with local electronics retailers to make sure converters were plentiful. Once it decided to go digital-only, the station ran radio spots, Pruess met with local clubs and wrote an op-ed article about the shut-off for the South Bend Tribune, and other local broadcasters covered the switch.
WNIT also set up an information hotline that has, in effect, gauged the progress of the station’s consumer education efforts. Since the station created the hotline, the typical questions “have changed from things like, ‘Why can’t I see you?’ to ‘Why isn’t my set-top box working?’” Pruess says.
But on the whole, she says, problems have been minor, signal reception has been good once the right wires get plugged into the right slots, and viewers have been empathetic.
“People in the community seem to understand that the other choice would be hugely expensive for an organization like ours,” she says.
Web page posted April 7, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
