|
For
Immediate Release
Awareness of
Digital TV Transition Grows, but Substantial Consumer
Education Still Needed, Cable Research Shows
Nationwide Survey Shows Consumer Awareness Nearly 50
Percent; Knowledge of Transition Lags in “Over the Air”
Households
(Alexandria, VA - December 10, 2007) There’s growing
awareness of the nation’s February 2009 transition to
digital television by TV broadcasters, yet the group of
Americans with the lowest level of awareness about the
transition includes those that are most deeply affected
– households that receive television programming
exclusively “over the air.”
These are among the results from the CTAM Pulse,
a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers
conducted last month by the Cable &
Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM),
an association of cable industry marketing executives.
CTAM is a member of the DTV Transition Coalition, a
group created to educate consumers about the digital
transition.
After February 17, 2009, the nation’s broadcast
television stations will begin broadcasting exclusively
in digital. This means that any consumer receiving
broadcast TV over the air on an older analog TV set must
take some action for that TV to continue receiving
programs from the local TV stations. Those options
include obtaining a new digital-to-analog converter;
subscribing to cable TV or other multichannel video
service, or replacing the analog TV set with a new one
equipped with a digital TV tuner.
Major findings of the CTAM survey show that:
-
Forty-eight percent of U.S. households are aware of
the digital TV transition, compared to just 29
percent from a survey taken in July 2005;
-
Groups
most familiar with the transition are subscribers to
broadband services (45 percent), digital cable
service (40 percent), and basic cable service (39
percent);
-
Seventeen percent of survey respondents –
representing more than 19 million homes – don’t have
any televisions connected to a video service
provider.
-
Households that don’t have any televisions connected
to a video service provider were least familiar with
the transition at 31 percent;
The survey
also indicates how much work remains in educating
American consumers about the transition. Forty-seven
percent of respondents said they do not know when the
digital transition will occur, and 26 percent believe it
will take place sometime other than the designated year
2009.
“In the months ahead, cable companies will reassure
their customers that all connected analog sets will
continue to display the new broadcast digital TV signals
seamlessly. In addition, companies will be aggressively
communicating with all consumers to alert them to the
transition, help them understand what will happen in
2009, and how they can benefit from this further
transition to digital television technology,” said Char Beales, President and CEO, CTAM.
Other key findings of the survey that will help guide
cable’s consumer education campaign on the DTV
transition include:
-
Of
those who are aware of the DTV transition, 38
percent said they’d learned about it from TV; 26
percent had read of it in the newspaper; and 20
percent had heard about it from friends or family.
-
Fifty
percent of households that watch TV exclusively over
the air said they don’t know where to turn for
information about the transition.
-
The
majority of households that currently receive cable,
satellite or any other TV service have all their TV
sets connected to some type of TV service – and
therefore are unlikely to need digital-to-analog
converters to keep their analog TV sets working.
However, 25 percent of these “connected” households
– or 23.3 million homes – said they also have at
least one or more “unconnected” sets in their homes.
-
Two-fifths (40 percent) of households with an
unconnected television set said they use those sets
to watch broadcast TV programs only; 22 percent use
them to watch DVDs; and 16 percent use them for
video games.
The
industry groups and government organizations that have
united to form the DTV Transition Coalition are
providing a variety of consumer information services to
help educate consumers about their options in the
transition. Extensive information is available the
Coalition’s principal website at
www.dtvtransition.org.
Consumers can learn more about how the transition
affects them at a Web site established jointly by CTAM
and the National Cable & Telecommunications
Association (NCTA) at
www.getreadyfordigitaltv.com.
Specific details on the U.S. government’s coupon program
to subsidize the consumer purchase of digital-to-analog
converters, which starts in January 2008, is available
from a toll-free number established by the National
Telecommunications & Information Administration,
1-888-DTV-2009.
The
Complete CTAM Pulse report is available on the
CTAM Web site at
http://www.ctam.com/news/pulse111207.pdf.
# # #
CTAM,
the Cable & Telecommunications Association for
Marketing, is dedicated to helping the cable
business grow. As a non-profit professional association,
CTAM provides marketing education and networking
opportunities to more than 5,500 members, through
conferences, consumer research, publications,
www.ctam.com, a
network of regional chapters, and the CTAM Executive
Management Program at the Harvard Business School.
CTAM also facilitates unified, national cooperative
marketing efforts on behalf of its corporate
members, such as the Cable Movers Hotline (SM),
Business
Services Initiative, and On Demand
Consortium. Consumers can learn about cable's
advanced services and see offers from their local
providers at the CTAM-supported www.ThisIsCable.com (SM).
Contacts:
Diana Cronan, CTAM, Director, Communications and Media
Relations, 703.837.6575,
diana@ctam.com
Melissa Lee, CTAM, Communications
Coordinator,
703.837.6577,
melissa@ctam.com
|
