The National Association of Broadcasters is hosting a press conference this Thursday for an 11th hour update on the DTV transition.
On June 11, the day before the DTV hard date, various stakeholders will gather at the National Press Club in Washington to talk about how ready broadcasters and consumers are going to be for June 12, when about 60% of TV stations will be pulling the plug on analog.
Scheduled to appear are Anna Gomez, acting head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, which oversees the DTV-to-analog converter box program; William Lake, the FCC's DTV coordinator; NAB TV board member Paul Karpowicz; Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association; Jason Oxman, senior VP of the Consumer Electronics Association; Mark Lloyd, VP of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Nancy LeaMond, executive VP, AARP;Christopher McLean, executive director, Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition; and Seth Geiger, President, SmithGeiger LLC.
The FCC last week held its own DTV update briefing, featuring several of the same faces. The general consensus was that both industry and viewers are sufficiently ready for a bumpy but passable road to the DTV future, though with a number of question marks related to reception and converter-box scanning issues.
Moderating the DTV update for NAB is Dick Wiley, former FCC chair and a pioneer in setting the DTV transmission standard that is the new currency of over-the-air broadcast delivery.
