Thread: Digital TV

Originally Posted by Bullishreturn

Digital TV hot line gets 700,000 calls over switch

LOS ANGELES - Nearly 700,000 calls were received by a federal hot line this week from people confused about the nationwide switch from analog to digital TV broadcasts that occurred Friday...


Can you believe it? After all the hype, there were still hundreds of thousands of people who waited until their sets went dark to call and ask for a coupon for a converter box.....

Why, yes I can believe it. Perhaps they were waiting for the new administration to buy them a new TV?

I'm sure it was a vast right wing conspiracy to keep people from watching reality shows and some talk shows.

Originally Posted by Bullishreturn

With 4,000 FCC staffers manning the phones Friday, the average wait time per call was 4.6 minutes.

That is an extremely poor service quality level for an event this large that they knew was coming. They should be ashamed of themselves for not better preparing...

Originally Posted by ChemEng

That is an extremely poor service quality level for an event this large that they knew was coming. They should be ashamed of themselves for not better preparing...

I submit to you that the people whining about no TV should have been better prepared. This thing has been advertised for a long, long time and the implementation date was moved from February to June.

The FCC first announced it in 1996 and the "Consumer Education Iititative" started in 2004.

Anyone who ever watches broadcast stations, over the air or via cable or satellite, has seen numerous tests at all hours of the day where you are plainly told "if your TV went blank or you lost reception you need a converter".

So, you believe it is the FCCs fault for not having enough people to handle the volume of calls from "citizens" who somehow did not know about the fact their TV would no longer work after Friday?

700,000 dumb asses...I wonder if these were the same dumb ass people that stayed behind in Super Dome?

This Digital TV conversion was told of happening almost a year ago..and the ADs on TV were starting to driving me crazy will the constant reminders to get ready for the switch...

Originally Posted by PessOptimist

I submit to you that the people whining about no TV should have been better prepared. This thing has been advertised for a long, long time and the implementation date was moved from February to June.

The FCC first announced it in 1996 and the "Consumer Education Iititative" started in 2004.

Anyone who ever watches broadcast stations, over the air or via cable or satellite, has seen numerous tests at all hours of the day where you are plainly told "if your TV went blank or you lost reception you need a converter".

So, you believe it is the FCCs fault for not having enough people to handle the volume of calls from "citizens" who somehow did not know about the fact their TV would no longer work after Friday?

That is a picture perfect, excuse the pun, of the difference between the socialist nanny stater and the person who takes personal responsibility. Grow up for goodness sake and take the dang thumb outta your mouth. You're fricking adults now, act like it. Heck these people knew since Feb that this was going to happen for the 2nd! time, yet the socialist/libs blame big business for not doing a better job of hand holding, when these folks should've have done it themselves.

We are raising a bunch of snively whiners, who expect the nanny state to do it all for them. Heck I bet they thought that bHo should've sent someone over to their house and hooked it up for them.

It's a sad state of affairs and one big reason that we're going down the crapper, way to go socialist. Dang how did these people survive the change form LP's, to 8 Track to Cassette to CD with the nanny state loving socialist not there to hold the wittle hands and wipe the tears awy for them.

Grow up and take some personal responsibility. I'm so tired of everything being one sides fault. Both sides have caused this mess, but to hear from a couple of folks here, it's that evil Bush and big business who is responsible for every worldly problem. These people have to wake up also or nothing will be worked out. There's plenty of blame to go around, but this converter box thing is nothing but the lack of responsibility by a bunch of lazy louts the the socialist want to hand hold forever.

Weekly rant over.

CB

Originally Posted by PessOptimist

I submit to you that the people whining about no TV should have been better prepared.

By watching more tv? I would argue that in a day of DVRs and "time shifting", depending on a commercial to deliver a message is probably not the best way to do it.

Originally Posted by PessOptimist

Anyone who ever watches broadcast stations, over the air or via cable or satellite, has seen numerous tests at all hours of the day where you are plainly told "if your TV went blank or you lost reception you need a converter".

My local stations didn't havent any commercials like these. They were more like badly scripted Sprint commercials and were easily overlooked like every other commercial.

Originally Posted by PessOptimist

So, you believe it is the FCCs fault for not having enough people to handle the volume of calls from "citizens" who somehow did not know about the fact their TV would no longer work after Friday?

Yes. If the government is going to make these changes to the public information infrastructure, then they also should be prepared to assist in the change directly on a 1 for 1 basis.

The idea that those people should have watched more tv to know what is going on and how to plan for it is strictly crazy talk. Lets not even bring into it the misinformation that was being promulgated by the cable companies themselves.

Originally Posted by ChemEng

That is an extremely poor service quality level for an event this large that they knew was coming. They should be ashamed of themselves for not better preparing...

A wait time of 5 minutes is great. I think the gov did way too much hand-holding.

These people probably were also taken by the joke about if you want vote for Laura Hall then show up at the poll on Wednesday.

Originally Posted by McDuck

A wait time of 5 minutes is great.

It doesn't say everyone waited 5 minutes. It says the average wait time was 5 minutes. There is a big difference that means a whole bunch of the 700,000 waited longer than 5 minutes. It also means that of those, a whole bunch waited much longer than 5 minutes.

Originally Posted by CountryBoy

We are raising a bunch of snively whiners, who expect the nanny state to do it all for them. Heck I bet they thought that bHo should've sent someone over to their house and hooked it up for them.

Ditto on that.

They were probably about to go postal about not getting to watch Jerry Springer, that Democrat from Ohio. I was surprised when he decided not to run for Senator. Hell we got Teddy Kennedy or maybe Al Franken, Springer is cleaner than those two perverts.

Originally Posted by ChemEng

It doesn't say everyone waited 5 minutes. It says the average wait time was 5 minutes. There is a big difference that means a whole bunch of the 700,000 waited longer than 5 minutes. It also means that of those, a whole bunch waited much longer than 5 minutes.

It also means that of those, a whole bunch waited much shorter than 5 minutes.

Hey, did you show up to vote on Wednesday?

Originally Posted by McDuck

It also means that of those, a whole bunch waited much shorter than 5 minutes.

Tell you what--the next times you call a company and get put in a queue, start the watch. You'll be surprised at how quickly they get you through.

I had the great displeasure of working at a call center for an insurance company in college, and we had to explain each instance that a phone wasn't picked up on the first ring. (In other words, the average wait time was 1 ring.)

This 5 minutes of waiting just shows a lack of planning for an event they planned. Clearly the solution is that all those callers should have watched more television...