Nearly one in four seniors remains unaware of the February 2009 digital transition from analog to digital transmission, according to the results a poll released Aug. 7 by Retirement Living TV.
According to Patrick Baldwin, VP of strategic development for Retirement Living TV, the public education campaign about the DTV transition in general is working, “but more should be done to target the most vulnerable.
The research, which found that 23 percent of seniors are unaware of the transition, will impact about 70 million Americans, or about 23 percent of TV households, he said.
The poll found that seniors with less education are more likely to receive only over-the-air broadcasts. Thirty-one percent of seniors without a college education have not heard about the transition at all, it found.
Additional findings show that seniors are relying heavily on TV news for information about the transition. While 42 percent of adults age 65 and older have learned about the DTV changeover through televised news, about two-thirds of adults between the ages of 18 and 64 already know about it. Another 33 percent of seniors learned about the DTV from TV ads. No other information sources for seniors made it into double digits.
Respondents for this survey were reached by telephone from June 4 to June 10 and selected randomly. RLTV surveyed 800 adults nationally with an oversample of 450 adults age 65 and older. The margin of error is +/-3.5 percent for all adult respondents.
For more information, visit www.rl.tv.
