Cities' Early Digital Shift May Leave Some TVs Dark

Hundreds of Northern California residents could wake up Monday to discover that their televisions no longer work as well. Three of four network stations in Chico and Redding, Calif., will begin broadcasting only in digital Monday, two months before the rest of the country. The worry is that some of the 20,000 residents who rely on over-the-air TV still aren't ready, despite local broadcasters' airing of thousands of ads and screen crawls to alert viewers. The transition in Northern California could be a harbinger of what happens on Feb. 17, when the whole country is required by Congress to switch to digital-only TV. (The ABC affiliate station for Chico and Redding also plans to go digital on Feb. 17.) Last week, 40 stations in Ohio shut off their analog signals for five minutes to show viewers what their analog TVs would look like without converter boxes: a blank screen. Viewers flooded a broadcasters' hot line with calls to ask how to get the government coupons and how to operate converter boxes, among other questions, said Christine Merritt, executive vice president of the Ohio Association of Broadcasters. She added that the hot line got so many calls -- about 7,500 -- that the phone system overloaded and crashed.