9.6 Million Households Still Unprepared For DTV Switch

According to Nielsen, 9.6 million households would receive no TV at all if the DTV transition happened today. In addition, another 12.6 million have at least one analog-only TV set in the house not hooked up to cable or satellite or DTV-to-analog converter box that won't receive a digital signal after the Feb 17 transition. That translates to one in five homes not entirely ready for the switch with four months to go. The study found that households with less education, lower income and blue collar workers were the least prepared, and that there remained a race gap, with older, white Americans better prepared than Hispanics, African Americans or Asians. The number of "fully unprepared homes" decreased by only 1.4 percentage points between May 1 and Sept 1, which leaves 8.4% unready. The most unprepared market is Houston, with 15.8% unprepared, while the most prepared market is Fort Myers-Naples (FL) with only 2.4% unprepared. But Nielsen also pointed out that one-quarter of the unready sets in households aren't being used for TV watching, but instead for video games or watching DVD. So, some of those unready sets will never be used for TV tuning and never converted.