The FCC’s call center has handled 900K telephone calls since 6/8/09, peaking on DTV Day 6/12 and diminishing steadily since. On that key Friday, 317,450 calls came in, followed by 145,403 Saturday and only 62,949 on Sunday. The call center remains in operation.
28% of the calls involved setting up converter boxes, 26% concerned reception difficulties for a specific station and 23% involved “broader reception issues.” And about 235K calls were forwarded to NTIA to accommodate citizens seeking converter box coupons.
This was never going to be an easy transition, as I have said many times,” said Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps. “It appears to have worked well for the majority of over-the-air viewers, but for those who are experiencing a less-satisfactory outcome, we are committed to staying on the job to help.”
The FCC said consumers in some markets were having trouble rescanning converter boxes, and individual stations were having particular signal loss problems in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. The FCC is working on both problems.
RBR/TVBR observation: All things considered, the transition went far easier than anybody had a right to expect. A round of applause to all the organizations and the broadcasters themselves for doing the hard work to make the end result seem so easy.
