DTV transition brings flood of confused callers

The Western Washington DTV Hotline has a message for you: You're not alone.

It was a phrase heard constantly at the makeshift phone bank local television stations set up in a lobby of KING-TV to answer questions about today's switch to digital from analog television.

About 20 people — including engineers and Federal Communications Commission officials — staffed the hotline, answering the flood of calls that poured in from the moment it opened.

"It's a zoo," said Diane Wagner, engineering coordinator, half an hour after the hotline opened. "We're inundated."

Calls came in with a variety of questions, from cable customers who just wanted to double-check that they're all set, to free-TV users who were told by operators that they'd need a converter box.

Talks about the digital transition have been going on for years. So why is there still a stream of calls coming in?

"Procrastination," said FCC officials Kris McGowan and June Gonzales together, nodding at each other.

The hotline fielded 340 calls in the first four hours, McGowan said.

McGowan said some free-TV users mistakenly believed their converter boxes wouldn't work until today and waited to install them.

Luckily, hotline staffers could answer most questions, either by telling callers how to get coupons (www.dtv2009.gov), where to get converter boxes (Target, which also saw a spike in television-set sales as the transition grew near) or why antennas weren't working (rabbit ears alone won't do it).

They coached callers on how to plug boxes and antennas into TVs and VCRs.

But sometimes, there wasn't much they could do.

"You're not alone," Mark Erskine, executive producer at KING-TV, told a caller. "You've done all the right things. You may be out of options."

Digital-television signals are less forgiving than analog signals. There's no snowy screen, no weak signals. Engineers call it the "cliff effect" — either you have it or you don't. And many callers didn't.

"Reception is the problem today," Erskine said. "It's the thorn in everybody's side."

Stephanie Rogerson, an administrator at KIRO-TV, said many of her callers were elderly people who couldn't climb onto their roofs to adjust their antennas.

"I'm going through the same thing time after time," said Erskine. "A lot of people are not liking me. I'm not getting a lot of love."

Lindsay Toler: 206-464-2463 or ltoler@seattletimes.com