Apparently, many are not and I can’t understand why. We’ve been ready for months (maybe even a year). When the federal government first started offering the coupons for converter boxes my husband immediately applied and we switched to digital as soon as we received them. We’ve been waiting for the conversion ever since because we lost PBS when we switched, we’re hoping to pick it up again when they switch to the full digital signal.

Millions of households will lose television reception next week when about 1,000 broadcasters around the nation shut off their analog signals and complete their conversion to digital programming, federal officials say.
The government has spent more than $2 billion to ease the transition to digital television, and in the last few months has cut in half the number of households that are unprepared for the final conversion on June 12. But the latest survey by the Nielsen Company indicates that as of the end of May, more than 10 percent of the 114 million households that have television sets are either completely or partly unprepared.
[…]
Michael J. Copps, the acting head of the Federal Communications Commission, said that the people most likely to lose reception are society’s most vulnerable — lower-income families, the elderly, the handicapped and homes where little or no English is spoken. The transition will also hit inner-city and rural areas hardest, he said.

I really can’t understand the problem since all the broadcast channels have been mentioning the conversion for months (even on the Spanish channels). And it’s not like it’s complicated. I think the government treats citizens like kids and this is just one more example. If you can’t be bothered switching, maybe it’s a good thing. More time to read a book.

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