Nearly half of U.S. households are aware of the February 2009 transition to digital TV, but the group of Americans with the least awareness of the analog switch-off include those who are most affected, namely households that receive over-the-air (OTA) television.
Results of a survey from the CTAM Pulse, a nationwide poll of more than 1000 U.S. consumers conducted by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), last month found that 48 percent of U.S. households are aware of the DTV transition, compared to 29 percent from a survey taken in July 2005.
The survey found:
- Groups most familiar with the transition are subscribers to broadband services (45 percent), digital cable service (40 percent) and basic cable service (39 percent).
- Seventeen percent of survey respondents — representing more than 19 million homes — don’t have any televisions connected to a video service provider.
- Households that don’t have any televisions connected to a video service provider were least familiar with the transition (31 percent).
- Forty-seven percent of respondents said they did not know when the digital transition would occur.
- Twenty-six percent said they thought it would take place sometime other than Feb. 17, 2009.
- Of those who are aware of the DTV transition, 38 percent said they’d learned about it from TV; 26 percent had read of it in the newspaper; and 20 percent had heard about it from friends or family.
- Fifty percent of households that watch TV exclusively over the air said they didn’t know where to turn for information about the transition.
To read the report in its entirety, visit http://www.ctam.com/news/pulse111207.pdf.
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