Nielsen: 3.3 Million Homes Completely Unready For DTV Transition

According to Nielsen, 3.3 million homes (2.9%) are completely unready for the DTV transition, meaning they don't have cable, satellite or a DTV set and have not hooked up a DTV-to-analog converter box, though they may have one.

That is down from the 3.5 million or 3.1% unready only two weeks ago.

Nielsen released the new figure Wednesday, 30 days before the June 12 transition date. But it did not release it fast enough to prevent the FCC from invoking that 3.5 million figure Wednesday in its own DTV transition update.

It used that number to underscore the urgency of educating and assisting high-risk DTV populations like seniors and minorities.

Seniors may be high-risk, but the Nielsen numbers continue to show them to be the most ready, with 1.6% unready in Wedesday's update, compared to the most-unready group, which is actually the 18-34 demo (5.4%).

Making the biggest percentage gain in readiness was the Asian category, which improved from 4.1% unready as of April 26 to 3.4% unready as of Wednesday.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.