Cable industry customer care professionals reported only marginally-higher levels of consumer phone calls to cable call centers.  They said that while call volume was up on Friday and Saturday, it had begun to tail-off on Sunday and was returning to close to normal levels by mid-day Monday.

We don’t think the transition is “over” yet, probably for millions of Americans.  Broadcast stations in many markets are working now to adjust technical parameters and “ease in” to their new frequencies and digital formats.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans are still waiting to receive government discount coupons for over-the-air converter boxes – in order to retrofit their analog TV sets for over-the-air reception – so they’ll still be installing hardware, hooking up boxes, and evaluating reception of their new digital pictures for some time to come.  Likewise, some over-the air households may still reach out to cable companies, or our satellite and telephone company competitors, in order to sign up for multichannel video service…which we still think is a good option for any consumer who wants to see broadcast television on an analog set.  As an industry, we’ll need to stay vigilant as the transition winds down, to ensure that our customers and other consumers get the most from their cable service.

If there’s any lesson to be learned from the DTV Transition of 2009…it’s that preparation pays off.  It was probably helpful when the President and Congress pushed the culminating transition date from February to June, and we appreciate what the FCC did to coordinate the activities of the many disparate stakeholders in the transition.  But even before that time, we believe the quarter-of-a-billion-dollar investment the cable industry made in consumer education for cable customers starting in 2007 – paired with the billion dollars of commercial airtime that the broadcasting industry kicked in for public service advertising – raised awareness of the transition to virtually universal levels and gave consumers some clues about how to get ready.  Our industry-wide contribution of call center support for the FCC from February through April 2009 not only helped fill the gap in meeting the need for consumer response efforts; it too became a consumer education tool and helped our own companies better understand the questions on the minds of consumers as the transition played out.  And the low-cost digital basic tiers that some of our companies rolled out also have proven to be a great way to introduce over-the-air viewers to multichannel video while serving the public good by helping local broadcast stations preserve their base of viewers.

Despite any hiccups, the effort to prepare American consumers for the age of digital broadcasting is likely to be remembered as a healthy public-private partnership that brought together both collaborators and competitors in a common cause.

Cable’s DTV “war room” operation has been under way since Thursday, featuring daily conference calls with more than 100 cable executives around the country, constant electronic communications with those executives, daily conference calls with FCC officials, and regular communications with representatives of the broadcasting and consumer electronics industries.  All of these outreach efforts turned up remarkably few problems.

Broadcast stations in a handful of markets had lost their digital signal, or were forced to reduce the power of their new digital transmission.  As we reported on Friday, this created some challenges for cable engineers in those markets who had to work hard to obtain and keep those signals up and running on cable systems.  As of the time of this writing, a very small number of broadcast stations are still having transmission problems, meaning that some of them can’t be carried by cable systems until the problems are fixed.  In all of those cases, broadcasting and cable engineers are collaborating closely to ensure continued cable carriage of the signals.  And the vast majority of issues that arose over the weekend were resolved within a matter of hours.

As far as we can tell, cable customer care has been largely unaffected by the transition as well.  A few cable call centers reported small “spikes” in call volumes this weekend at times when broadcast transmissions may have failed.  But as broadcast signals have been restored in most of those areas, call volumes have returned to normal.

We’re continuing to work with the FCC and to keep a close eye on all developments.  We’d appreciate knowing of any issues you’ve come across…or hearing any comment you might have about the course of the broadcasters’ DTV transition.

As the story notes:

[President-elect Barack Obama's] transition team met with industry and government stakeholders in Washington last month to get a status report on the transition, and concluded more needed to be done to make sure viewers predicted millions of calls about the transition could be answered in a timely fashion.

So, we’ve responded with this letter, which I have now posted to NCTA’s website. It’s addressed to Tom Wheeler, who headed NCTA from 1976-84 and is currently the Transition Agency Group Leader for Obama’s Presidential Transition Team. The letter reports that efforts to provide a national, coordinated DTV transition call center would be ready by February 17, the current date for the transition to take place.

The plan calls for the use of up to 7,000 live operators during a period leading up to and for several weeks after Feb. 17, efforts that would require expenditures of approximately $20 million of out-of-pocket costs, most of it expended by the cable industry, and would include contracting third-party capacity, integrating and purchasing trunk line capacity, the hiring of English and Spanish speaking live agents, training, and the development of scripts.

These efforts will be ready to go if the current transition date of Feb. 17 stays in place; but have been engineered with the flexibility to change if the transition date is extended (as is being discussed by some).

Since the word “digital” is in both of these transitions, even though digital TV and digital cable are two different technologies, some confusion has occurred. For example, earlier this week, Thomas Kraemer wrote on his blog:

I was surprised to see Comcast doing a mandatory switch to digital cable at the same time over-the-air TV is switching to digital. I thought they would phase it a year later as a way to keep cable customers. At first I thought they might be trying to exploit the confusion over the digital TV transition to free up some bandwidth by eliminating analog TV channels that they could replace with more profitable bits.

See also Brier Dudley at the Seattle Times writing on his blog.

In fact, cable’s transition has been happening for some time and will continue after February. Some consumers have mistakenly assumed that cable’s assurances that its customers need probably do nothing during the DTV Transition were incorrect.

Good news today for all those folks. NCTA has sent letters up to Congress today to announce some moves that should help clear up the confusion. First, here’s a relevant quote from our letter:

… we recognize that the overlap between cable’s digital migration and the broadcasters’ DTV transition scheduled to occur on February 17, 2009, inescapably adds a layer of complexity and the potential for consumer confusion.  We are determined to address those issues.

The cable industry has gone to extraordinary lengths to help make the broadcasters’ DTV transition as seamless as possible for consumers.  Our industry was the first industry to run a national education campaign on the DTV transition and has already aired over $225 million in public service announcements entirely devoted to educating consumers about the broadcasters’ transition and the availability of converter boxes and government-supplied coupons.  Alone among multichannel video programming distributors, cable operators will also ensure that all commercial must carry broadcast signals are formatted for both digital and analog customers in accordance with rules set by the FCC (rules that were, in fact, based on a voluntary plan first proposed by the cable industry).

Even with those efforts, the cable industry has been asked to consider taking additional steps to help smooth the DTV transition. In response to these requests, cable operators represented on the NCTA Board of Directors (who own and operate cable systems serving ninety percent of the nation’s cable subscribers) have committed to the following:

• Digital Migration “Quiet Period.” To minimize consumer confusion during the DTV transition, operators will delay the substitution of digital versions of existing analog channels from December 31, 2008, to March 1, 2009, except to the extent necessary to free up bandwidth to comply with the requirement to carry broadcast signals in both analog and digital formats or meet contractual carriage obligations.
• Analog Broadcast Basic Tier. Operators that offer dual carriage of broadcast signals would make access to the analog broadcast basic tier available under a promotional offer to new customers who subscribe just to that tier. This offer would be available beginning December 31, 2008, and would continue for at least 120 days after the proposed quiet period – through June 30, 2009. The service would be provided at the promotional price for at least one year after the customer subscribes.
• No Additional Charge for Equipment or Service. Recognizing that there is likely to be continuing consumer confusion even after the February 17, 2009 broadcaster DTV transition, operators would also provide the following additional assistance to all-analog cable households during and for at least 120 days after the proposed quiet period – through June 30, 2009 – to help them manage cable’s digital transition. If, during this period, an operator removes the analog version of a PEG or other channel from the broadcast basic or expanded basic tier and replaces it with a digital version of the channel on either of those tiers, the operator would make available to all-analog households, upon request, at least one free device that enables those households to view the channel. The device provided under this program would remain free for at least one year. There would also be no additional service charge for at least one year for the affected channel or, at the operator’s option, the broadcast basic or expanded basic tier where the digital version of the channel has been placed. Individual operators may choose to continue this program after June 30, 2009, or to initiate other similar programs after that date.
• Clear and Conspicuous Customer Notification of Any Channel Migration. Whenever operators cease transmitting analog PEG or cable programming services and begin offering those channels only in digital, they will provide clear and conspicuous notice to affected subscribers and franchising authorities not less than 30 days in advance. The notice would also inform subscribers that they have at least 60 days to avail themselves of the offers described above.

I hope this will help consumers during an admittedly confusing period.

So far, that includes TV advertising valued at $200 million. Not only has NCTA produced PSAs, but cable companies have also produced spots explaining the transition.  We have created a consumer website aimed at educating the public and participated with broadcasters, satellite companies and the telcos in multi-industry outreach to make sure consumers experience little disruption during the switch.

I want to make one key point here: A key component of our advertising campaign was directed at helping people learn how to get digital television without the use of cable. We were directly promoting a competing technology.

You can find our DTV spots at NCTA’s YouTube channel. Our advertisements were promoting the NTIA’s TV Converter Box Coupon Program, which allowed you to request a coupon that can be used to obtain a converter box so that you could receive digital TV on your analog set through an antenna. Our PSAs didn’t even promote our DTV website (Get Ready for Digital TV), but rather the NTIA’s www.DTV2009.gov.

At any rate, despite that education campaign, there are still many people confused about the DTV transition. So, let’s walk through the essentials.

The DTV Transition concerns the nation’s full power over-the-air broadcast TV stations preparing to switch to an all digital system in 2009. It is not cable’s transition.

As part of easing the move, some cable operators are promoting low-priced tiers called “lifeline service” for customers looking for an alternative for rabbit-ears reception of television. We also crafted a voluntary carriage commitment so that full power broadcast TV stations would be available on cable’s analog tiers for three years.

Given all of this, I was dismayed to see a new editorial from Consumer Reports magazine, entitled “Confused about cable?” The piece argues that cable operators are “using confusion about the forthcoming digital TV transition” to raise rates.  The “confusion” they’re referring to is the confusion between the DTV switch and cable’s own transition from analog delivery to digital.

While the broadcasters are converting to digital broadcast transmission due to government mandate, cable is transitioning to digital compression to serve our customers better.

I’ve written about this issue multiple times:

• Clearing up the DTV Transition
• The two digital transitions
• Separating the two transitions
• Once more – there are two transitions…

Bottom line: The broadcasters have their transition, we have ours. Cable’s efforts to move analog channels to the digital tier in order to free up bandwidth has been going on for years and will continue after Feb. 17 has come and gone. The two transitions have nothing in common, since digital cable and digital broadcast television are two separate technologies that only have the word “digital” in common.

Here’s an example. The CU article starts this way:

Should they sit down now to watch the Animal Planet channel, Heather Shorr and her daughters would no longer see snow leopards—just snow. Shorr, a Connecticut homemaker, says their cable provider has moved the channel onto a digital tier.

That’s a cute pun on “snow,” but it makes no sense. If Animal Planet was on channel 34 on the analog tier and it was moved to channel 112 on the digital, you wouldn’t see snow. You’d probably just see a different channel in its place. The use of the word “snow” probably makes the confusion worse by making it sound like a DTV Transition issue, when it is not.

Cable companies will eventually migrate all customers to digital, since multiple analog channels can be compressed into the space of one digital channel.  That additional capacity can be used to deliver more HD channels, faster Internet connection speeds or other services to come.

While the timing of the two transitions is unfortunate, and it has created a a little bit of a brouhaha, the fact is the DTV transition was supposed to be done quite some time ago, and our digital transition had begun before Congress set the hard date for the DTV switch (digital cable is a decade old).

Despite all that, we’ll keep plugging away, so that consumers can have a clear sense of the issues.  We will do all we can to ensure consumers (and reporters) have all the information they need to tell the two transitions apart, and to understand them both.

The basics: Cable operators and other Multichannel Video Programming Distributors can’t retransmit broadcast signals (such as NBC, ABC, CBS, or Fox) without first obtaining the broadcaster’s consent.

TV station group LIN TV and Time Warner Cable have been in negotiations, but haven’t reached an agreement. At midnight last Friday morning when the existing carriage deal expired, LIN pulled the signals of 15 stations in 11 markets from Time Warner systems, which affects about 2.7 million of their subscribers.

While negotiations continued over the weekend, alternatives were promoted. LIN suggested Time Warner customers could switch to such competitors as Dish Network or FiOS TV. Time Warner has given away around 50,000 antennas to allow over-the-air reception of those broadcast signals and has also produced an online video that shows people how they can watch some broadcast programming over the Internet for free.

If you missed NCTA’s Kyle McSlarrow on C-SPAN’s The Communicators Saturday night, you can now watch the episode online (or catch the repeat tonight on C-SPAN 2 at 8:00 p.m. ET). One of the first questions he addressed was the issue of retransmission consent. NCTA has expressed concern that a number of carriage deals are set to expire at the end of this year, about six weeks before the Digital Television Transition occurs on February 17. There is potential for consumer confusion and disruption with these deals being renegotiated during this period.

While the NAB has volunteered a four-week quiet period surrounding the DTV transition date – two weeks before Feb. 17 and two weeks after – McSlarrow has proposed that a slightly longer quiet period would be beneficial for consumers, while hardly tipping the balance of power in retrans negotiations.

• Lawmakers See Challenges for TV Transition (WaPo)
• Early Digital-TV Switch Has Flaw: Viewers Could Lose Certain Channels on Permanent Basis (WSJ)

Some viewers had issues in Wilmington with over-the-air reception of the new DTV signal; some had problems setting up converter boxes with their analog TV sets.

NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow had a little different perspective, as he testified at that hearing. He focused on the issue of retransmission consent and how it would be effected by the transition. This FCC fact sheet covers the details, but suffice to say that retrans (and the related term “must carry”) refer to how cable operators can carry broadcast stations.

Here is some of the coverage of his testimony:

• Retranmission Deals May Get Derailed by DTV Transition, Cable Operators Warn (TV Week)
• McSlarrow: Retrans Uncertainty Creates Cable ‘Storm’ (MediaDailyNews)
• DTV “quiet period” debate gets noisy in Congress (Ars Technica)

Here is a link to the text of McSlarrow’s comments and I’ve embedded the audio below (which runs just under six minutes).

To help you understand this, you need to understand that retrans and must carry play a critical role in ensuring you can see your local broadcast stations as part of your cable lineup.  Some of the existing deals will lapse around the end of the year, right before the Feb. 17 transition date.

Last month, the NAB Board of Directors pledged to identify a Retransmission Consent Quiet Period. NCTA issued this statement:

“In recent months, we have discussed with NAB the need to recognize the potential for consumer confusion and disruption involved with retransmission consent disputes that might arise as we approach the broadcasters’ digital TV transition on February 17, 2009. We appreciate NAB’s acknowledgment that this is a very real concern, and continue to support efforts to minimize potential consumer confusion through the adoption of a quiet period. But the reality is that many outstanding retransmission consent agreements expire by the end of 2008. Any voluntary quiet period that does not begin before the agreements actually expire – or which is too brief to preclude potentially confusing messages about broadcast carriage during the time of the actual DTV transition – represents the illusion of a commitment and does not serve the consumer.”

Here is some of the coverage:

• Charlotte Observer
• Light Reading’s Cable Digital News
• Elon University’s The Pendulum

One takeaway from the event was that there seemed to be very high awareness of the transition, but there also continues to be some confusion between the digital transition involving over-the-air broadcast stations and the digital transition that cable operators have been conducting for a few years.

For example, here’s a recent post from the Cultured State blog: The 2009 Digital TV Transition: Flirting With Disaster. The author insists that “the cable television industry isn’t telling the whole truth on what’s about to happen to your cable service.” The false charge is leveled that you won’t be able to continue to receive your cable signal unless you have a set-top box or a Digital Cable Ready TV. Proof is offered in the form of a July article from MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan.

As it so happens, I’ve already addressed Sullivan’s piece:

Bob Sullivan, senior writer for MSNBC.com’s Technology section, posted an article today entitled “The ‘Other’ Digital TV Conversion Might Cost You,” which purportedly attempts to clear up some confusion about the coming Digital Television transition. In fact, it simply sows more confusion. Sullivan has tried to establish (falsely) a direct relationship between the upcoming “DTV Transition” and efforts by cable operators to expand their video offerings and enhance other services.

Read the whole thing for the full explanation, but suffice to say that cable needs to manage its bandwidth, which is why we see things like switched digital video or channels being moved from analog tiers to digital. This has been going on for some time and has nothing to do with the Digital TV Transition of next February.

A sinister portrait is painted of the cable industry’s intentions regarding set-top boxes. I will simply refer you to comments I made to the TV Barn blog:

“If you switched to DirecTV or Dish, you have to have a new box. If you switch to Verizon FiOS or AT&T’s U-verse, you have to have a new box. It baffles me to no end why there are four companies competing with cable and nobody has ever complained that you have to have a set-top box for them.”

Michael Marcus at the Spectrum Talk blog also has concerns: 6 Months to Go and Some DTV Confusion Continues. He tries to wade through a variety of website, but concludes, “…if you have your analog TV set connected directly to the cable system and select channels directly with your TV set tuner, you might be in trouble in the near future.”

What he’s referring to is that cable operators have offered to carry local broadcast signals on analog tiers for three years, unless the cable system goes all-digital. This does not seem to be sufficient for him:

Note that the FCC requirement only deals with local over-the-air signals (e.g. signals from NAB and MSTV members), not C-SPAN, CNN, The Food Network, etc. So the quote from the DTV Transition Coalition above (actually linked through the NCTA site) that says “TV sets that currently receive programming through cable or satellite are not likely to be affected by the transition to digital.” is at best a half truth. So is the FCC quote, “Analog TVs will continue to work with cable, satellite, VCRs, DVD players, camcorders, video games consoles and other devices for many years”. But if your idea of TV is limited to what the 15% of American homes without cable or satellite actually see, then the information is correct.

Once again, we’ve got apples and oranges. The Transition is about over-the-air broadcast stations. If cable channels have to be moved from analog to digital, that is a completely separate issue.

Several of my colleagues were down for the event and one captured this video.

In that video, there were four TV sets displayed, but you can only see the two on the right. Of those two, the one on the left is hooked up to a digital TV converter box and is receiving the digital signal. The one of the right is receiving the analog signal. Once the switch is thrown, the screen first goes black and then shows a message telling viewers that they need to do something to receive the digital signal.

And here’s a  more detailed report from NCTA’s Rob Stoddard:

By all measures, the Wilmington trial was, technically, a success. The full-power commercial broadcast stations in the market were successful in pulling down at 12:00 noon Eastern Time all of the network, syndicated, and local programming they were broadcasting in analog – leaving viewers entirely dependent upon those broadcasters’ digital signals. Cable operators in the market, and presumably the satellite providers that also serve viewers there, were successful in accommodating the digital-only scenario, as well as in processing the hundreds of requests for new service or service upgrades that came in the days preceding and during the cut-over.

All major stakeholders – broadcasters, cable operators, and government officials at the national, state and local level – also appear to have been successful in collaborating on solutions that would best serve consumers. That collaboration left a halo of good feelings, in that the various groups, which more frequently are competitive and adversarial, were almost surprised to discover that they could work closely together within tight time constraints to resolve all of the issues implicit in the cut-over.

What we’ve actually learned from the trial, so far at least, is more an affirmation than new knowledge:

People will (and do) wait until the last possible moment. According to published reports, cable operators reported a flurry of consumer calls; supplies of pertinent consumer electronic devices (converter boxes, antennas, etc.) were stretched; and local officials reported a run on applications for government discount coupons, meaning that some consumers would be waiting to receive coupons well after the cut-over date – all in the hours leading up to the actual cut-over. And this in a market in which NAB reported 97 percent awareness in the week prior to the cut-over.

The “digital cliff” effect does take a toll. Published reports also say that local TV stations received, collectively, hundreds of calls right after the cut-over, many from people who had obtained and properly installed the government-certified digital-to-analog converter boxes for their over-the-air analog TV sets, but who for a variety of reasons could no longer see some or all local TV signals. We can assume that some people needed new or better antennas; others had failed to program their new boxes by scanning for available digital channels; still others just aren’t in a good place to receive local digital TV signals.

And, many people needed help from others to get over-the-air converter boxes hooked up and working properly. The City of Wilmington was persuaded to take action less than a week prior to the cut-over, to make firefighters and emergency responders available upon request, to help hook up a box, re-position an antenna, or provide other assistance to citizens who needed it.

It remains to be seen how these learnings can be applied to the nationwide cut-over that will occur February 17. However, the trial was successful in identifying the kinds of issues that tangibly could be addressed by all communities and stakeholders in the weeks ahead.

As a public service, I’ll attempt to unpack what he wrote.

First, let me point out that NCTA has been saying for some time that there are two “digital transitions” – the digital TV transition for full-power, over-the-air television stations, and the cable industry’s efforts to transition analog channels onto digital cable tiers, in order to reclaim bandwidth and serve consumers with more and better services. This second transition is more of a “digital migration,” and it has been under way for many years now. See this earlier blog post for more details on the differences between these two transitions.

The article starts off correctly distinguishing between the two efforts, but then he makes the claim that cable’s transition “could leave up to 100 million TVs in the dark, unable to display any cable TV channels at all without adding extra equipment.” He further claims that this gathering threat will come to pass eight months from now: “Come February, though, millions of TVs will no longer be capable of displaying cable TV channels without new equipment…”

Having sounded the alarm, Sullivan then pulls back on the timing. First, he writes, “But the death of cable analog television is arriving a bit more stealthily, and more piecemeal.” And pretty soon he makes it clear that the change will be gradual:

…it’s unclear how the industry can turn off analog service without leaving millions of customers in the dark.

The cable transition will not be as brutal as the end of the analog broadcast, which will hit with one fell swoop in February.

Instead, cable operators will decide on their own when to make the switch. So far, some services – such as Time Warner – have indicated that its analog signal won’t be shut down any time soon. Robyn Watson, spokeswoman for the company, said its 3 million analog “basic cable” consumers won’t see any changes in service.

The rest of the article continues to mix concerns about the broadcast transition and the cable one, suggesting that something nefarious is afoot. The fact that cable’s transition has been going on for some years (since the late Nineties), and is anticipated to continue for several years beyond next February, appears to be almost entirely overlooked.

The transition to all-digital cable systems will provide a range of benefits for cable customers, such as access to many more channels, including high-definition offerings. Freeing up bandwidth will help with the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0, the ultra fast “wideband” Internet access that will deliver speeds of over 100 Mbps. In addition, new digital set-top boxes will deliver DVR capability, better interactivity, and improved technical quality. For consumers who don’t want a set-top, the coming deployment of tru2way technology, supported by recent progress in completing deals with television set manufacturers, will move us towards a world where consumers can elect to not have a box.

As pointed out already in the article, the cable industry is working hard to comply with the requirements from the FCC for continued carriage of broadcast TV signals in analog.

It’s important to note that DBS was an all-digital platform from its inception, which means that consumers have always needed a box on every TV for reception. AT&T’s U-verse multichannel video service has also been all digital since inception, and Verizon’s FiOS TV service is undergoing the exact same digital conversion, on a market-by-market basis, that the writer finds so sinister. Therefore, it’s amusing to read reader comments under the story expressing anger about having to take a box from a cable operator, complete with threats to go to the telcos or DBS – who will then require you to take a box.

UPDATE: Michael Willner also touched on this issue in a post today, in regards to the migration of premium channels from analog to digital on Insight’s Louisville system.