**REMARKS OF FCC COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J.COPPS**

**FCC-WILMINGTON TOWN HALL MEETING ON DTV**

**WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA**

**MAY 27, 2008**

Chairman Martin, Mayor Saffo, Distinguished Guests. Thank you all for
being here today to talk about and plan for one of the most important
initiatives the FCC has launched in a long while. I want to thank
Chairman Martin, without whose leadership this effort would not be
happening. He not only ran with the idea but he did so with full-fledged
commitment to find a really good market to run the test and then to
devote the resources necessary to make it work as seamlessly as
possible. But a huge---and I mean *huge*---share of the thanks goes to
Wilmington---its broadcasters, its elected leaders and many others who
are stepping up to the plate in a high-stakes enterprise. Broadcasters
make a bargain with the citizens who own the airwaves that their
stations will serve the public interest. In participating in this test
market initiative, your local broadcasters breathe life into that public
interest commitment. I thank them for it. I thank the good people of
Wilmington more generally. From your point of view, you\'ll be getting
to the digital Promised Land a few months before everyone else, but I
realize it will take some doing to get it done right.

Now, there are some who wonder why we\'re spending so much time on
Wilmington when there\'s a whole big country out there to prepare. There
are a couple of answers to that. First, the efforts won't stop in the
rest of the country. In fact, I'm looking for them to speed up. There
are still a lot of Americans who don't know precisely what they have to
do to make this transition work for them and their TVs. Truth be told,
no one has all the answers. That's one big reason we're so interested in
running a test market---so we can identify any unanticipated problems.
And the idea is that we will have the resources here on the ground in
Wilmington to fix any such problems as quickly as possible and then be
able to prepare for them when the rest of the country makes its
transition.

What kinds of things will we learn here? I divide them into four
categories - technical, consumer, partnerships and the dreaded unknowns.

First, as hard as it is to believe this late in the process, there are
still a lot of technical things we don\'t know. Engineers can run the
numbers until the cows come home, but until you actually get out into
the real world, you don\'t really know how things are going to work. How
well do those new digital signals travel? Do they travel the way analog
TV signals travel? How many people will need new antennas to receive
digital? And if they do, are those outdoor antennas for digital when
they only needed rabbit ears for their analog sets?

Second, what about consumers? Which messages reach them and which
don\'t? Are there harder-to-reach groups like the elderly, the disabled
or non-English speakers who need special outreach? What kind of
outreach? What difficulties do consumers have installing the converter
boxes and getting a picture? How many consumers won\'t do anything no
matter how much you tell them in advance? And how do consumers who lose
TV on the switch-over date recover? What are the stations' plans for
dealing with any interruptions?

Third, partnerships. By that I simply mean the FCC can't make this
happen alone, nor should we expect Wilmington's citizens, officials and
broadcasters to make it happen alone. This is uncharted territory, and
our nation functions best when we venture into that kind of territory
with both our private and public sector resources at-the-ready. Take
outreach, for example. There are a lot of folks to prepare for September
8. It will take not only the FCC, NTIA and your broadcasters and local
governments to bring this off. It will take your service clubs and
membership organizations, your other media and community organizations,
your schools (even your churches will be affected), it will take the
combined resources of this community. Everyone stands to gain from this;
everyone wants to avoid service interruptions; that's why I am confident
everyone will work together---but it won't happen on autopilot. It will
take real and comprehensive commitment.

Finally, in any effort of this scale, there are unknowns that no one
anticipates and you find out about only when you throw that switch.
That\'s the category that really keeps me up at night. That's why this
test is so important. And that's why we need other broadcast markets to
step up and run tests like this, or at least field tests on more limited
parts of the problem, such as robustness of the DTV signal; whether
sometimes indoor antennas might have to be replaced by outdoor; and
whether there are differences in performance among the various kinds of
set-top boxes, to name a few.

The bottom line is that the more real world experience we can get in the
next six months, the better off we\'ll be on February 17, 2009, when the
rest of the nation hopefully goes digital.

I know that if anyone can make this happen, it's the good citizens of
the Tar Heel state. I've lived in North Carolina; gone to school in
North Carolina; worked for a while for a North Carolina company; gotten
to know most of your very able Congressional delegation and, more
recently, your fine mayor---and I just know that if you all come
together, this is going to work. Thank you again for what you are doing.