More than nine million US households are not ready for the upcoming transition to all-digital broadcasting and would be unable to receive any television programming at all if the transition occurred today, according to new research from The Nielsen Company.
Another 12.6 million households have at least one television set that will no longer work when the digital transition occurs, meaning that nearly one in five US households are either partially or completely unready for the transition.
All television stations are required to switch to digital programming by February 17, 2009, which will leave viewers without a television signal unless they switch to digital.
Nielsen said that the number of fully unprepared homes decreased 1.4 percentage points from May 1 to September 1, 2008, leaving 8.4% of all US households still completely unready.
The report also found that households whose total annual household income is under $25,000 per year are five times more likely to be unprepared than households earning over $75,000.
Unready televisions are disproportionately in the kitchen or secondary bedroom, as opposed to the living room or master bedroom.
In homes that have made the transition from “unprepared” to “prepared” there is a 19% increase in overall viewing.
A report from Leichtman Research Group released in June also found that many US homes were not prepared for the change to digital-only broadcasting.
LRG found that, in total, 34% of all US households are at risk of losing broadcast reception to at least one TV set as a result of the forthcoming digital switchover (see US Homes Not Fully Prepared For Digital Switchover).
At the start of the year, Strategy Analytics revealed that worldwide sales of digital TV set-top boxes broke through the 100 million barrier for the first time in 2007 (see Popularity Of Digital TV Reaches Record High).
Sales reached 102.4 million units last year, an annual increase of 12%. IPTV’s market share rose to almost 6%, compared to 3.6% in 2006, and cable’s share also rose, to 36.2%.
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