Over 13 million analogue-only television households in the US are unprepared for switchover, and another six million have at least one set that won’t work after the analogue signal is switched off in February 2009, according to the Nielsen Company.
For the past 18 months, the company has reviewed various components of the transition to measure its impact, said Nielsen senior manager Eric Rossi at the company’s annual client meeting on audience measurement in Las Vegas.
Nielsen found that adults older than 55 are better prepared than younger households in the States. The research organisation also found that whites and Asians are more ready than blacks. Additionally, it found that more Hispanic households still rely on analogue, over-the-air broadcast television than non-Hispanics.
The company’s estimates are based on the same national and local TV ratings samples that are used to generate Nielsen TV ratings. These samples are representative of the total U.S. population and individual local markets.
Nielsen found: that over 10% of all households would have no access to TV signals if the transition occurred today, and almost 17% of all households have at least one analogue TV set that would not work after the switch.
New York is the most ready local TV market, with just 3.5% “unready” TV sets, whilst Portland, Oregon, is the least prepared local market, with 22.4% of all households using only analogue sets and over-the-air television.
However, according to a recent report from Solutions Research Group (SRG), nearly 80 million Americans (43% of the online population) have watched one of their favourite TV shows on the internet, up from 25% 12 months ago.
A full 20% of the American online population said that they watch TV on the web on a weekly basis, ahead of the 14% who say that they use cable video-on-demand (VoD) offerings (see 20% Of Americans Watch TV Online On Weekly Basis).
Meanwhile, comScore’s Video Metrix service for December 2007 has revealed that US internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service (see US Users Watched Over 10bn Videos Online In December).
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