10MM Homes 'Completely Unready' for DTV: Nielsen

One topic of great interest last week at The Cable Show was the digital TV transition and how prepared -- or unprepared -- consumers are for it. The general consensus was that cable and satellite customers will be fine since all the conversion will take place before the signal even reaches the consumer home. That assumption is predicated upon consumers connecting ALL the televisions in their house to cable or satellite, not just their primary TV. But assuming they do, they will in fact be okay.

The bigger issue is the homes that rely completely on over-the-air antennas for their TV watching. Nielsen is out with a new study, reported in today's New York Times, showing that up to 25 million TVs will go dark on Feb. 17, 2009 and that 10 million households are "completely unready" for the DTV transition. One interesting factoid from the Nielsen study is that senior citizens are actually among the most prepared demographic groups, which is counter to what many industry observers expected.

There are also regional discrepancies as demonstrated by much higher than average unprepared levels in Milwaukee and Salt Lake City (18%).

Expect the current trickle of ads telling you how to avoid losing your TV signal next February to turn into an avalanche fairly soon. The ads will get redundant and quite possibly annoying, but the government, the nation's broadcasters and the cable and CE industries want to make sure everyone's ready for the coming digital revolution.