Advertisers in the US are growing more concerned about the planned digital television (DTV conversion in the United States on 17 February 2009. The date is carefully timed — it’s after the Super Bowl, but before the NCAA basketball tournaments.
Unfortunately for broadcasters and advertisers, the conversion comes in the middle of a sweeps month. The Nielsen Ratings service, which calculates television viewership a broad-based sample of American households, has released some surprising figures. Senior citizens seem more prepared for DTV than previously believed. Households with two or more television sets are more likely to have at least one set that is not ready for DTV, despite an endless barrage of television announcements about the conversion plan. Hispanics and African-Americans and younger households are more likely to lose their television service:
Using its ratings panel, Nielsen found that 9.4 percent of households, or roughly 10 million homes, were “completely unready” for the switch as of April 30, meaning that all their television sets would go dark next year. An additional 12.6 percent of households were partly unready.
See this New York Times article for more information.
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