Shift to Digital TV Sends Late Adapters Scrambling

Television stations across the U.S. began broadcasting Friday exclusively in digital, and millions of unprepared Americans scrambled for a signal.

Despite a year-long effort by the government, broadcasters and cable operators to warn people of the digital-TV switch, about 2.8 million households remained completely unprepared as of Wednesday, according to Nielsen Co. Older Americans were more prepared than the national average, Nielsen found, but younger people and African-American and Hispanic households continued to lag behind.

Millions of Americans were still fiddling with new set-top converter boxes to keep older, analog TVs working Friday, or installing rooftop antennas to get better reception of the digital channels.

For Christina McMahon, an 89-year-old retired nurse in San Francisco, the process was initially confusing. She was able to obtain a $40 government coupon to help pay for a converter box, but then couldn't figure out how to set it up properly. Ms. McMahon called the phone number for assistance on the box, but still had trouble. "I had to sit on the floor behind the TV to try to figure out what they were telling me," she said. Eventually, a nonprofit group sent a technician to her home to help.

In Minneapolis, Zachary Johnson, a 50-year-old construction worker, said he wasn't able to get a converter box delivered to his home, a single room in a transition house for the formerly homeless. On Friday, Mr. Johnson visited a city park where coupons and boxes were being given out. He was able to get a coupon for the full value of a converter box. "I thought I was going to have snow on there when I watched tonight," he said.

Most Americans weren't affected by the digital switch because they subscribe to cable or satellite TV services, which aren't affected. An estimated 20 million U.S. households relied exclusively on free, over-the-air TV a year ago and had to either buy a new digital TV or get converter boxes for older TVs.

Procrastinators flooded call centers with requests for the government coupons Friday. Nearly 31 million coupons have already been redeemed, but requests for coupons continue to pour in. On Thursday, the government received 319,990 requests.

ENLARGE

RadioShack sales representative Evelyn Rosario helps customer Charles Jones with his purchase of a conversion box to switch from analog to digital television in New York. Associated Press

In Cincinnati, the Freestore Foodbank handed out 250 donated set-top converter boxes to the needy Friday morning, but quickly ran out. Hundreds of people began lining up at 3 a.m. in the rain for a free box after local TV stations reported the food bank was giving them away.

For more than a year, pay-TV operators have been banking on the confusion surrounding the digital transition to pick up formerly over-the-air customers by pushing cheap packages and same-day installations.

Comcast Corp. CMCSA -0.47 % has ramped up advertising, direct mail and phone calls to sell cable services to TV viewers affected by the change-over, said Derek Harrar, the general manager of video services at Comcast. The operator with the most subscribers in the U.S., Comcast has been marketing a new $10-a-month package aimed at over-the-air customers. On Friday, the company said it would extend its same-day installation offer later into the month.

Retailers reported brisk sales of hardware to handle the conversion. "Sales continue to be extremely strong and have exceeded our expectations," said Jana O'Leary, a spokeswoman for Target Corp. TGT 0.08 % , which ran a $40 set-top box promotion this week, essentially making the boxes free for people with coupons.

A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT -0.57 % said it had ordered additional inventory to meet demand this weekend.

For some people who have already made the switch, the biggest complaint so far is that free, over-the-air digital signals fade out for people who live too far away from TV towers.

Judith Deutsch Bennett of Minneapolis has a converter box hooked up to one TV and a new digital TV in her kitchen, but both regularly lose their signals for no obvious reason. "It will be fine for 30 minutes and then it just goes wacky," she said.

Congress decided four years ago the U.S. should switch to digital TV so some TV airwaves could be used for other things. Digital signals take just a fraction of the space of older, analog TV signals. Lawmakers set aside some of the airwaves for police and firefighters, and auctioned off the rest to wireless companies for almost $20 billion.

The switch was originally scheduled for February but was postponed to June 12 after Congress and the Obama administration worried millions of Americans weren't ready.

—Ben Worthen and Vishesh Kumar contributed to this article .

Write to Amy Schatz at Amy.Schatz@wsj.com and Christopher Rhoads at christopher.rhoads@wsj.com