Call it television’s version of Y2K.

As the over-the-air broadcast world is preparing to bid a final farewell to analog transmission, Columbia market television station executives say they don’t anticipate any surprises when they make the transition to digital at 12:30 p.m. June 12.

However, as WIS General Manager Donita Todd put it, “Obviously we are using engineering models right now and the switch should not affect our coverage area. But ultimately we really don’t know for certain until the switch is made.”

Julius Knapp, the official in charge of engineering and technology for the Federal Communications Commission, says nearly all digital signals are carried in the UHF band. If a station is broadcasting its digital signal in UHF, there will potentially be some spots where the signal will not reach as well as it did before with analog.

Todd says her station is currently carrying its digital signal on the UHF band but that will change once the conversion takes place.

“Two things we are trying to get out to the viewing public is that we will be broadcasting our digital signal on the VHF channel 10 starting June 12,” Todd said. “That means that anyone who has already obtained a converter box will need to rescan their television channels on that day after the switch.

“Another nuance is that we will start the process of getting up to maximum power, and that will take a couple more days,” she said. “Once we have made the transition to VHF and power maximization, our coverage should be the same as before and possibly even better.”

WOLO Station Manager Dave Aiken says his station’s digital signal will be also carried in the VHF band.

“We are just turning off our analog signal on June 12,” Aiken said. “We will actually be broadcasting digitally on channel 8, but we will still be channel 25, and we anticipate an increase in our coverage area.”

WLTX General Manager Rich O’Dell says he is heartened that local viewers seem to be getting ready for the digital switch early.

“The national ‘soft test’ was done May 21 and that went very well,” O’Dell said. “We went off for five minutes at 7:30 a.m. 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on that day. The screen showed the words ‘If you see this, you need to take action now,’ which indicated that a viewer was not ready for the transition. There was a toll-free FCC hot line following the test that received 55,000 calls nationwide, but there were only 900 received from South Carolina. Half of those calls were about the converter boxes and half were about antennas.”

However, WACH President and General Manager Scott McBride feels every station in the Columbia market will experience some percentage of lost coverage.

“We have done the multiple tests where we have turned off our analog signal and only showed the digital so any necessary corrections could be made,” McBride said. “The digital signal strength can be affected by a number of individual factors.

“Most of the loss in coverage, however, will occur because I think 4-6 percent of the populace still isn’t aware of what’s going to happen June 12,” he said. “We received a number of calls about reception problems after the tests. In a number of cases, we actually went out to viewers’ homes on an individual basis and fixed what was wrong. We are getting fewer of those kinds of calls as the deadline draws near.”

According to television station over-the-air transmission maps provided by the FCC Web site, WCBD and WCSC in Charleston will lose a large portion of their coverage area in Bamberg, Calhoun and Orangeburg counties after June 12.

Cable and satellite television providers will handle any issues for the local stations they carry. However people who receive over-the-air transmission should have an advantage over cable subscribers following the switch.

“Cable will not carry all the channels that local stations can broadcast after June 12,” Aiken said. “Those who have antennas will be able to get all the sub channels offered by the Columbia stations, most of which are weather-related. ETV already offers three channels and we run two. I believe WIS and WLTX each have two or three apiece. That’s the other beauty of digital transmission — the potential for additional programming.”

Todd says the digital signal will be better, but like any new technology, there may be growing pains.

“The viewing patterns will be the same but the reception depends on many individual factors,” Todd said. “But judging by the calls we are getting, we’re encouraged that the preparedness of the viewers in our market is high.”

For more on the digital conversion, click here.

T&D Staff Writer Phil Sarata can be reached by e-mail at psarata@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5540.

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