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67–820 2012

OVERSIGHT OF THE DIGITAL TELEVISION 

TRANSITION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, 

TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MARCH 26, 2009 

Serial No. 111–23 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

energycommerce.house.gov 


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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

Chairman Emeritus 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

Vice Chairman 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JANE HARMAN, California 

TOM ALLEN, Maine 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland 

CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

BRUCE BRALEY, Iowa 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

Ranking Member 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

STEVE BUYER, Indiana 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 


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(III) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia, Chairman 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan (ex officio) 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

Ranking Member 

J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico 

CHARLES W. ‘‘CHIP’’ PICKERING, 

Mississippi 

VITO FOSELLA, New York 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Rick Boucher, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth 

of Virginia, opening statement ............................................................................ 1 

Hon. Cliff Stearns, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 2 

Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement .................................................... 4 

Hon. Zachary T. Space, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Ohio, opening statement ...................................................................................... 5 

Hon. Lee Terry, a Representative in Congress from the State of Nebraska, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 6 

Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, opening statement ....................................................................................... 7 

Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Tennessee, opening statement ............................................................................ 8 

Hon. Kathy Castor, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 9 

Hon. Anthony D. Weiner, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

New York, opening statement ............................................................................. 9 

Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement .................................................................................. 153 

WITNESSES

Michael J. Copps, Acting Chairman, Federal Communications Commission ..... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15 

Answers to submitted questions 1

Anna Gomez, Acting Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, U.S. Department of Commerce ................................................................... 26 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 28 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 161 

Christopher Wood, Vice President, Senior Legal Counsel, and DTV Compliance Officer, Univision Communications Inc ..................................................... 55 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 57 

Gary Severson, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Entertainment, WalMart Stores ........................................................................................................... 88 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 90 

Gary Shapiro, President and CEO, Consumer Electronics Association .............. 97 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 100 

Peter Morrill, General Manager, Idaho Public Television ................................... 105 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 107 

Mark Lloyd, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, Leadership Conference on 

Civil Rights ........................................................................................................... 119 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 121 

Robert S. Prather, Jr., President, Gray Television, Inc ........................................ 125 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 127 

SUBMITTED MATERIAL

Statement of Qualcomm, submitted by Mr. Shimkus .......................................... 138 

Response of Qualcomm to questions submitted by Mr. Dingell ........................... 154 

Statement of Community Broadcasters Association, submitted by Mr. Shimkus ......................................................................................................................... 158 

1Mr. Copps did not respond to submitted questions for the record. 


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OVERSIGHT OF THE DIGITAL TELEVISION 

TRANSITION 

THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Rick Boucher 

(chairman) presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Boucher, Markey, Weiner, 

Castor, Space, McNerney, Dingell, Stearns, Upton, Shimkus, Blunt, 

Radanovich, Terry, Blackburn, and Barton (ex officio). 

Also present: Representatives Pierluisi and Inslee. 

Staff present: Roger Sherman, Senior Counsel; Tim Powderly, 

Counsel; Shawn Chang, Counsel; Amy Levine, Telecom Counsel, 

Mr. Boucher; Pat Delgado, Policy Coordinator, Mr. Waxman; Philip 

Murphy, Legislative Clerk; Greg Guice, FCC Detailee; Neil Fried, 

Senior Minority Counsel; Amy Bender, FCC Detailee; Will Carty, 

Minority Professional Staff; and Garrett Golding, Minority Legislative Analyst. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICK BOUCHER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH 

OF VIRGINIA 

Mr. BOUCHER. The subcommittee will come to order. This morning we examine the status of the digital television transition since 

the passage of legislation postponing the final date for analog signal termination from February 17 until June 12. Much has occurred since that measure became law. Under the thoughtful leadership of acting assistant secretary for communications and information, Anna Gomez, the waiting list for coupons, a major factor 

in our decision to postpone the transition, has been cleared, and 

that truly is a major accomplishment. 

Coupons are now being sent to applicants by first class mail so 

households will receive them more quickly. NTIA has changed its 

guidelines and now allows households whose previously-issued coupons had expired to reapply for coupons, and many households are 

now doing so. 

The FCC has bolstered its call centers, which at the time we 

postponed the transition were due to inadequate resources in total 

disarray. And the results of this progress are clear. When we postponed the transition according to the Neilson Service, 6.5 million 


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homes were totally unprepared for the transition and would have 

lost all television service had the transition taken place as originally scheduled on February the 17th. That 6.5 million homes represented fully 5.7 percent of all television-viewing households 

across the United States. 

Today 4.1 million households remain unprepared; a number that 

is 3.6 percent of the television-viewing public. That is a major improvement, but much remains to be done to enable the preparation 

of those homes that remain unprepared as of the present time. 

Congratulations are due to Ms. Gomez and to acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps for this stewardship of the transition at a truly 

difficult and challenging time. And I can say this morning that I 

truly appreciate the work of both of these outstanding public servants. 

But challenges do lie ahead, and today’s hearing has as its purpose achieving a full understanding of those challenges and the 

best means by which we collectively can address them. And these 

questions, I think, need answers. 

Will we have enough converter boxes to meet the demand prior 

to June the 12th? I personally have some serious concerns about 

whether a sufficient number of converter boxes will be available in 

order to meet the demand under our current forecast. 

Could there be a spike in demand in the weeks prior to June the 

12th, similar to what was experienced during December of last year 

and the early weeks of January this year, and if it is reasonable 

to anticipate a spike in demand, are we prepared for it? Will NTIA 

have the mechanisms in place in order to meet that kind of elevated demand? 

And what steps are being taken to make technical assistance 

available to homes in low income and rural areas of the Nation 

where technical help typically is not readily available? 

Today’s hearing will examine these and other future needs as we 

prepare for the June 12 transition date. I want to thank our witnesses for their participation this morning and welcome each of 

them. 

Mr. BOUCHER. And at this time I am pleased to recognize the 

ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida, 

Mr. Stearns, for 5 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CLIFF STEARNS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA 

Mr. STEARNS. Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. This 

is a case where the glass is half empty or half full, and in this case 

the glass is 95 percent full, and we perhaps have a different view 

of this. 

We opposed delaying the transition to June 12 from February 17. 

We thought it was unnecessary since 95 percent of the television 

homes were ready for the transition on February 1 with 2 weeks 

still to go. And of the roughly six million households that were still 

unprepared, just under three million were holding coupons that 

simply could have been used on February 17. 

To help the remaining three million homes that were still unprepared and didn’t have coupons, Mr. Barton and I, the ranking 

member and I, advocated authorizing an additional $215 million in 


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early January. The NTIA said that they would have allowed it to 

clear their waiting list in time to continue with the transition. We 

even would have gotten most of the money back at the end of the 

unused coupons. 

We certainly had enough time to do so in light of the fact that 

the delay act was passed only 5 business days after its January 29 

introduction. It appears we were right that there was no need to 

delay. Despite significant arm twisting, one-third of the Nation’s 

1,800 full power station simply transitioned by February 17 anyway. The sky did not fall. 

The fear that consumers would overwhelm the system with frantic telephone calls was simply unfounded. The FCC received less 

than 20,000 calls a day from February 13 to the 19th, well within 

its capacity, and many of the calls were just about how to set up 

the converter box, which are often just simply resolved over the 

phone. All total, half the Nation’s full power stations covering 193 

of the country’s 210 television stations will transition before the 

June 12 date. 

But Congress did not delay. We decided to spend $650 million for 

the transition, which simply put is a waste of money and hurting 

the credibility of the Federal Government. That money did not become available until June 2, excuse me, March 2, yet between February 1 and March 1, even before a single coupon was issued with 

the additional funds, 1.4 million more households simply became 

ready, with the number of prepared households climbing to 96 percent. Of the 4.4 million households that still needed to take action 

to continue receiving television service, approximately two million 

were holding at least one active coupon. This means we allocated about $270 for each of the 2.4 million 

unprepared homes without a coupon, even though a converter box 

simply costs under $50. The fact that the money was not available 

until March 2 is also why it took until just this week to clear the 

waiting list, which continued to grow all this time. 

Now, that is the unfortunate history. Now we must try to limit 

the harm. We could do so by dedicating $350 million of the funds 

for exclusively over-the-air homes which would pay for two redeemed coupons for each of the 3.6 percent of homes as of March 

15 that are exclusively over the air and still unprepared. Since we 

were concerned over such homes that supposedly justified this 

delay, that is where we should focus our attention. Otherwise all 

this headache and all this expense will have been for nothing. 

If we do focus on over-the-air homes rather than paid television 

homes that are not in jeopardy of losing service, we may get back 

more than half a billion dollars from both the initial and the stimulus money once the transition is completed. That is because the 

initial funding covering 331⁄2 million redeemed coupons, only 26 

million have been redeemed as of March 18. By contrast, if we continue to spend as much or more money on pay television homes as 

over-the-air homes, the Administration may find it has not made 

a significant dent in the four million remaining unprepared homes. 

Let us not forget that there are more than six times as many pay 

television homes than over-the-air homes. 

In closing, Mr. Chairman, from February 15 to March 15 we 

went from 4.4 percent of all households unprepared to 3.6 percent. 


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That is an improvement of only .8 percentage points. Let us make 

sure that that is not all we get for the $650 million. Our consumer 

confusion, our headaches. Please work with us to ensure that the 

NTIA and the FCC spends money on over-the-air homes and saves 

the rest for something more important. We may not agree on what 

that important thing is, but I am sure we can find something better to spend the money on these days than converter boxes for the 

vast majority of homes that are already prepared for the transition. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stearns. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, former chairman of this subcommittee, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH 

OF MASSACHUSETTS 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much, and I want 

to commend you for holding this hearing on the digital television 

transition and for assembling an excellent panel of witnesses to 

testify this morning. 

As you know, Mr. Chairman, this subcommittee conducted six 

oversight hearings in the last Congress and received three GAO reports at my request on the digital TV transition. We tried very 

hard to keep people’s feet to the fire and to try to make the original 

date work. 

Now that Congress has moved the date back to June 12, it is important that we wisely use the additional time and the additional 

resources to maximize consumer education and outreach and to ensure that the least amount of disruption is caused to consumers 

during this transition. 

I want to commend acting FCC Chairman Copps for the alacrity 

with which he has taken on the task of being our Nation’s quarterback on the transition. I also want to salute his emphasis on the 

coordination he has effectuated with his FCC colleagues; with the 

NTIA as well as with consumer groups and with the television industry. I think his testimony is an eye-opening dissection of what 

went wrong but also a pathway to ensure that all will go right on 

June 12. 

I also wanted to commend Acting Assistant Secretary Gomez of 

the NTIA for the diligent work she has performed, along with IBM 

to eradicate the backlog of four million coupons that were on the 

waiting list. Obviously much still needs to be done to ensure success, and I believe the testimony from the FCC and NTIA today 

provide a sound blueprint for moving forward. While we have many 

broadcasters already ceasing analog transmissions in many smaller 

markets, we still have the largest stations in the largest markets 

looming for our flash cutoff on June 12. It is important to execute 

this well. I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, and 

with Chairman Waxman, Ranking Members Barton and Stearns to 

ensure that we meet this date and that the American public feels 

that the government did its job. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Markey. 


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The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Upton, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

Mr. UPTON. I am going to defer. 

Mr. BOUCHER. The gentleman from Michigan defers his opening 

statement and will have 2 minutes added to his questioning time 

for the first panel of witnesses. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Shimkus, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

For over 50 years we have had April 15 as the tax filing day, and 

it is coming upon us, and again this year we will have millions of 

people who will not file on time. And that will be true come June 

12. And that was true in February, and as much government 

money and advertisement as we want to throw at it will not change 

that fact. 

Let us see. We have, by this Congress and this Administration 

a carbon tax that will destroy the economy, we have a plan for a 

one-payer healthcare system that will ration healthcare for all, we 

have a reckless spending agenda that will bankrupt this country, 

but what we could do in this debate, in this hearing, Mr. Chairman, is find out how we can save $600 million. 

Now, I know in this Congress that is not a lot of money but for 

most Americans it is, and that is what I hope we address in this 

hearing and these questions. 

I yield back my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Shimkus, for your normal moderate statement. He and I are friends. He knows I can say 

that and get away with it. 

The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Space, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ZACHARY T. SPACE, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO 

Mr. SPACE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to come together today to discuss progress made towards 

this Nation’s full conversion to digital television. It is very clear to 

me that this process has not been an easy one. Rather our shift 

from analog to digital has involved a significant amount of time, 

energy, resources, and creativity. And further such efforts are ongoing, necessarily providing support for months to come. 

Whether one favored the delay or not, I think most will agree 

that because of the phased approach we find ourselves in now we 

have learned some very good lessons that continue to enable us to 

adjust and improve consumer outreach and education. The NTIA, 

the FCC, our broadcasters, cable providers, retailers, suppliers, 

service groups, public entities, local officials have all truly joined 

forces in an effort to shepherd the transition through to completion. 

In Ohio’s 18th district WOSU, the PBS station out of Columbus, 

Ohio, has done some very good work in preparing our communities. 

Through an FCC contract WOSU has been able to provide DTV 

outreach through walk-in centers, a call center, and installation assistance and numerous public events. They partnered with Life 

Care Alliance and the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging to reach 

thousands of the estimated 100,000 over-the-air households in 


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Ohio, many of which are senior citizens. WOSU’s DTV coupon donation program received national recognition from PBS and served 

as a model for other communities across the country. 

I understand that there is much more to be done, but I believe 

WOSU’s case serves as an example of how members in the community can work together to ensure that all citizens have the information they need to prepare for the last phases of the digital transition. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and thank you, 

again, Mr. Chairman, for calling attention to this issue. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Space. 

The gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Terry, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LEE TERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEBRASKA 

Mr. TERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding today’s hearing, and I appreciate our witnesses being here to help us through. 

In informance of the current status and as probably many on this 

committee know I was vocally opposed to the delay, knowing that 

there is always going to be a certain percentage of people that are 

never ready, and we can’t just delay something because people 

didn’t get ready or we didn’t get to 100 percent. 

Now, one TV station in my market still held with the February 

date, and that is WWT. It is interesting on the transition date how 

few calls they received. Many of us were prepared for an onslaught 

of thousands, and it turned out to be a few hundred. They had 

phone banks ready, United Way, 211, and we just didn’t see the 

level of activity. And most of the complaints that were coming in 

they needed help with the scan. 

Thirty-three inquiries on that date were about how to get a coupon, that they did not have a coupon. Now, out of a DMA of 

412,000 people and 33 of the inquiries were how do I get a coupon 

now since we just lost channel six is a very tiny percentage, and 

that is eight one-thousandths of 1 percent. 

So I appreciate the boldness of WWT channel six for going forward because I am now convinced on June 12 the calls will probably be the dozens and not the hundreds, and there is probably 

very few out there that are left that aren’t prepared. 

So I wanted to thank them publicly and in fact, Mr. Prather is 

from Bray TV, the owner of the TV station this year on the next 

panel, and I welcome you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Terry. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is recognized for 

2 minutes. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I am going to waive my opening 

statement. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. McNerney. I see that 

the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Dingell, Chairman Emeritus of 

our committee has joined us, and the gentleman is recognized for 

5 minutes. 


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OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. DINGELL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, you are most kind and courteous, 

and I thank you. I commend you for the initiative that you are 

showing and making certain that the DTV transition is subject to 

adequate oversight and is properly conducted. 

As we are all painfully aware the DTV transition has been 

fraught with great difficulty since it was mandated in 2005, and 

particular grave errors by the National Telecommunications and 

Information Administration, NTIA, and the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, during the previous Administration in 

their management of the DTV converter box coupon program and 

consumer education efforts were in large part to blame for the 

Congress’s passage of legislation to postpone the DTV transition 

date. 

As I support no further postponement of this deadline, I look forward to cooperating with you, Mr. Chairman, in robust oversight 

of the programs associated with DTV. And I would urge you to continue your vigorous efforts in this matter because I have great 

fears that the transition will not be successful unless it is watched 

very closely. And to see to it that it works in a way which is going 

to create minimal inconvenience to the Nation’s consumers. 

During numerous hearings in the 110th Congress I asked representatives of NTIA whether they had sufficient funding for the 

converter box program. Despite a report in 2008, by the Government Accountability Office that NTIA would be unprepared to cope 

with a surge in consumer demand for converter coupons, NTIA consistently stated that it had adequate funding with which to meet 

consumer demand for these coupons and to see to it that and assured us that the coupons were both sufficient in number and 

being properly handled. 

This as we recently have learned was patently false, and I think 

we have to get NTIA’s commitment today that it will be forthright 

and cooperative with the Congress in making certain that the converter box program is properly administered with a view towards 

providing coupons to every consumer who applies for them and to 

assure that the conduct of the program is done well, expeditiously, 

and that we don’t have to contemplate the extension again of a program that has already gone on over long. 

Similarly, I look forward to a frank discussion with the FCC 

about the role that it plays in consumer education and outreach 

about the DTV transition. Prior attempts at these vital activities 

were disastrously mismatched and proven to be largely ineffectual, 

something that we must strive to avoid at all costs in moving forward. 

Also, because of the DTV Delay Act, extending FCC’s authority 

to auction spectrum, we must ask frank questions about the agency 

plan for preventing waste, fraud, and abuse in these auctions, 

which have to my experience rarely been well conducted. 

I hope to have a productive conversation with our other witnesses about several additional issues related to this matter, including ongoing concerns of many people about DTV’s transition effect on low income persons, minorities, and elderly populations, and 


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the financial capacity of public television broadcasters to cope with 

the transition and the adequacy and availability of the supply of 

computer boxes to meet the consumer demand. 

Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your enlightened 

interest in seeing to it that the Nation’s transition to digital television is properly conducted and does not cause vast inconvenience 

to the people we serve. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Chairman Dingell, for 

those remarks. 

The gentlelady from Tennessee, Ms. Blackburn, is recognized for 

2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE 

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to Mr. 

Copps, and I want to welcome Ms. Gomez. I think this is your first 

appearance with us, so we welcome you. And thank you for the 

hearing, sir. I appreciate that. 

Fortunately for consumers and members of the subcommittee, 

the world didn’t come to an end on February 17 when stations 

began transitioning to an all digital signal. In the seventh district 

alone in Tennessee, my Congressional district, eight full power 

broadcast stations have already made a full digital transition in advance of the June deadline, and three more are slated to make that 

move by May 1. 

This parallels the national trends, where roughly one-third of full 

power broadcast affiliates have already made the switch. Federal 

and private sectors officials report minimal customer disturbance. 

That is a good thing. 

In short, this is working. This is no doubt a product of a vigorous 

public, private partnership invested in an unprecedented public 

education campaign, funded in large part by our Nation’s broadcasters and cable television providers. In the intervening period between passage of the DTV Delay Act and the committee’s proceedings today, the NTIA is now current in distributing converter 

box coupons, the much ballyhooed two million customer waiting list 

is cleared, and NTIA claims to be processing new requests in less 

than 2 weeks per requesting consumer. This is certainly positive, 

and I congratulate the agency for its diligent work. 

The question we must ask while Congress considers a budget resolution that will increase federal spending to 28.5 percent of our 

Nation’s GDP is, at what cost? The DTV Delay Act and companion 

funding from H.R. 1 unleashed the federal flood gates to the tune 

of $650 million to aid a transition that was already running 

smoothly. And I realize that in DC that is not a lot of money, but 

where I come from it is, and I believe that money must be recouped, if possible, on behalf of the American taxpayer when the 

DTV transition is complete. 

As I stated during consideration of the DTV Delay Act Congress’s 

priority must be to ensure connectivity for exclusively over-the-air 

homes, remaining from the overall group of 4.1 million unprepared 

households. 


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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the time, and I yield 

back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Blackburn. 

The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Castor, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. KATHY CASTOR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA 

Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to our witnesses. 

At the outset of the Obama Administration they learned that the 

switch to DTV had been badly mismanaged. Millions of Americans 

who had applied for converter coupons languished on waiting lists 

while the February deadline approached. Consumer education programs have been successful, but over six million households were 

completely unprepared. The affected households tended to be disadvantaged with the elderly and non-English speakers particularly 

hard hit. 

Worse, progress in setting up call centers to deal with the inevitable confusion of transition day was almost non-existent. In short, 

millions of televisions were on a trajectory to go dark on February 

17 without adequate resources to help them navigate the transition. 

Congress was forced into a difficult decision to delay the transition until June. Since then everyone has made significant progress 

in reaching households and helping them prepare. Since the passage of the DTV delay 2.4 million digital converter coupons have 

been redeemed. Replacement coupons have been sent, households 

that inadvertently allowed their coupons to—households that had 

been aware their coupons had expired, even better, first class mail 

rather than the bulk rate was employed to avoid further delays. 

Call centers are going up, and the number of bilingual operators 

has increased so that all Americans are able to get help with the 

transition if they need it. 

I encourage everyone to continue to work diligently to ensure 

that the DTV transition in June goes smoothly and that the most 

vulnerable Americans are not left behind. I am confident that we 

can do this, and I look forward to your testimony. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Ms. Castor. 

The gentleman from New York, Mr. Weiner, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ANTHONY D. WEINER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW 

YORK 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this hearing. If anyone doubts the power of Congressional oversight, I would note that in preparation for today’s hearing on Tuesday alone 91,000 people requested coupons, and last week I guess 

in anticipation of your tough questions 1.6 million, if I am reading 

this right, coupons were issued, more than just about any other 

month in recent months. 

I acknowledge what our colleague from Illinois points out that 

there are a lot of people who were left out in the cold, and maybe 


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the solution was to just turn off their television coverage, which 

would have been the result of the transition when it was originally 

scheduled. As with so many things this Congress is endeavoring to 

do, we are mopping up for the last Administration. We are going 

to be doing that a lot. We are going to be taking mistakes that 

were made and trying to fix them. 

But I don’t know who we would have punished by saying, OK, 

tough tacos, you are going to lose your service. And I think Congress was not prepared to do that. There were a lot of mistakes 

that were made, but I hope we also use this opportunity to take 

advantage of the glitch. Mr. Copps points out in his testimony 

something that others have observed that having this as a staged 

transition might have been the better way to go originally, you 

know, doing it—what other nations have done to give an opportunity to learn stage by stage. Maybe we can take this window of 

time that has been presented by some transition and going on to 

learn some of the lessons. 

I think there was a pretty, there was some wisdom in arguing 

to do that at the outset, and maybe if we use this opportunity, we 

do what our friend Robin Manuel refers to not letting any crisis go 

to waste, maybe this is also an opportunity for us to learn, and I 

appreciate the chairman holding this hearing to permit us to do 

that. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Weiner. 

The gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Inslee, who has since 

departed. 

The gentleman from Puerto Rico, Mr. Pierluisi, not a member of 

the Commerce Committee, has been welcomed to our hearing 

today, and I am pleased to now recognize him for 2 minutes. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member Stearns, 

members of the subcommittee, thank you for providing me with the 

opportunity to speak today. 

I asked to participate in this hearing because I think it is appropriate for the record to reflect that the DTV transition has been especially problematic for the many of the four million U.S. citizens 

I represent. Now that the transition date has been extended until 

June, it is my hope that the deficiencies in planning that gave rise 

to these problems can be addressed. I know that today’s oversight 

hearing reflects your determination, Mr. Chairman, to make certain that recent history does not repeat itself. 

I want to emphasize at the outset that the problems experienced 

in Puerto Rico to date did not result from lack of awareness on the 

island about the transition. Community and media organizations 

serving Puerto Rico, working in conjunction with the Commerce 

Department, did a terrific job of informing consumers about the 

steps that they needed to take in order to avoid a loss of service. 

I think this stands in contrast to certain jurisdictions in the states, 

where outreach efforts were less successful. 

In a somewhat ironic twist, however, residents of Puerto Rico encountered problems precisely because they heeded this guidance too 

well. Upon being advised of the impending transition, my constituents did not hesitate. They applied for coupons quickly and in 

droves. The sheer number of coupon requests made from households in Puerto Rico should not have come as a surprise. It is comVerDate Mar 15 2010 08:55 Mar 02, 2012 Jkt 067820 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A820.XXX A820

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mon knowledge that Puerto Rico relative to the states has a large 

percentage of residents that rely on analog TVs. 

Although Puerto Rico ranks about 25th in total population size 

among U.S. jurisdictions, island residents have sought more coupons than all but seven states. As of March 17, about 2.1 million 

coupons had been requested by the island. This is about 80 percent 

of the amount requested by New York, a State with five times our 

population. And it is roughly three times the amount requested by 

Kentucky or Oregon, which have comparable population sizes. 

For some island residents who requested these coupons, the system worked as designed. They received the coupon, went to a participating island retailer, and used the coupon to offset the cost of 

the converter box. But for far too many of my constituents the process did not proceed as planned. As in the states some households 

in Puerto Rico requested coupons but were placed on a waiting list 

because demand exceeded supply. 

Other households obtained a coupon but found their local retailers no longer had boxes in stock, and therefore, had to wait. While 

they waited their 90-day coupon expired. Based on intuition and 

some anecdotal evidence, I think this scenario may have been more 

common in Puerto Rico than in any other jurisdictions. 

In August, 2008, letter sent in response to Puerto Rico’s request 

that coupons be reissued to individuals whose coupons had expired, 

the Secretary of Commerce—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Let me ask the gentleman if he could wrap up. He 

is well—a minute beyond his time at this point. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. OK. I will wrap it up. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Noted that the law did not prohibit an individual 

whose coupon had expired from obtaining for free an unexpired 

coupon from a generous friend or family member. Frankly, that 

was a way to go, but it didn’t help. 

My purpose today is not to cast blame, because that is not constructive and because there is probably enough to go around. I 

want to look forward, not back, and to make sure that we do what 

is necessary before June to make this transition as seemly, seamless as possible. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Pierluisi. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. The gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Inslee, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

Mr. INSLEE. I will waive, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Inslee. 

We now turn to our first panel of witnesses, and I am pleased— 

I am sorry. Were you—I am sorry, Mr. Blunt. 

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I don’t want to slow up the panel, 

and I will just—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. I didn’t see you arrive. Mr. Blunt, you are recognized for 2 minutes. 

Mr. BLUNT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit a statement 

for the record. I am pleased you are having this hearing. Certainly 

in my Congressional district I think all of our transition will be 

done by the middle of April. One of our stations already made their 

transition by themselves on February the 17th. I think they were 


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convinced that their analog equipment might not last much longer 

than that, and I am going to be interested to see how this scattershot transition that we are now in occurs around the country, but 

I am anxious to hear the witnesses. I am glad you had the hearing, 

and I will submit a statement for the record. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Blunt. 

We now welcome our first panel of witnesses, and we are honored to have with us this morning the acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Mr. Michael Copps, a longstanding member of the commission, and also the acting assistant 

secretary for communications and information at the Department 

of Commerce, Ms. Anna Gomez. And without objection your prepared written statements will be made part of the record. We 

would welcome your oral summaries. Please keep those to approximately 5 minutes so that we have ample time for questions. 

And Mr. Copps, we will be pleased to begin with you. 

STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL J. COPPS, ACTING CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION; AND ANNA GOMEZ, 

ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR COMMUNICATIONS 

AND INFORMATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL COPPS 

Mr. COPPS. Good morning, Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member 

Stearns—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. And just a little technical matter for the Chairman of the FCC, could you turn your microphone on, please? 

Thank you. 

Mr. COPPS. Thank you very much. I have a formal statement 

that I request be included in the record. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Without objection. 

Mr. COPPS. Thank you for inviting me this morning. 

Priority number one for me since my appointment as acting chair 

2 months ago has been to shepherd the DTV transition to smoother 

pastures. We strive each day to carry out the provisions of the 

Delay Act in such a way as to ease the transition for millions of 

anxious viewers while at the same time providing legislativelymandated flexibility and balance for our TV stations. 

We had no detailed roadmap for this. What we had and have the 

commitment to get this job done better than it was getting done. 

Every day my FCC team and I rely to achieving a successful balanced outcome. Some may think we have erred too much one way. 

Others may say the other. At the end of the day maybe all I can 

ask is for what Harry Truman once said should be his epitaph, ‘‘We 

are trying our damnedest.’’ 

It was clear to me long before I became acting chair and had a 

chance to look under the hood that the country was not ready for 

a nationwide transition on February 17, not with the coupon program out of money and a long waiting list. Not with rampant consumer confusion that I saw everywhere I traveled. Not absent provisions for hands-on community assistance, particularly for the 

most vulnerable of our populations. There was no coordinated plan, 

no one making sure that the private and public sectors had every 

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ther of us could do alone but that working together we might just 

have a shot at even at this late date. 

Thank you for the Delay Act. It clearly recognized that consumers were not ready for February 17, and it gave them a few 

extra months to prepare. The Act made it possible to avoid a consumer backlash of high order in February, but we are nowhere 

near out of the woods. Little more than a third of our full power 

commercial stations have transitioned, and at this point only 2.5 

percent of households are in markets that have completely 

transitioned to digital. 

So I am happy to look back today, but this is a story whose main 

chapters remain to be written. Now, some may say that we won’t 

be ready on June 12 either, and that there will still be consumers 

left behind, and it is true. This transition will not be seamless. You 

can count on some level of confusion, that level being determined 

by how well we do our job between now and June 12. There is time 

to make a real difference. 

Here is some of what we are doing at the FCC to learn from the 

past and make that difference. We are focusing day and night on 

consumer education. We are repackaging our messages and adding 

vital new components to them. Starting April 1, for example, stations must modify their, notify their viewers about specific areas 

that may lose signal coverage no matter what consumers do, about 

the possible need for new antennas, and the need to rescan. 

Stations also must publicize the location and operating hours of 

walk-in centers and telephone contact information for the station 

and the call center. We are going to do everything we can to put 

boots on the ground. One lesson we have learned is the urgent 

need for hands-on assistance, including walk-in help centers and 

in-home assistance for consumers who need it, and there are lots 

of them. Seniors, folks with disabilities, citizens for whom English 

is not the primary tongue. So we are finalizing agreements with 

AmeriCorps and fire fighters to provide outreach and in-home assistance to consumers across the country, and we will be soliciting 

bids from other organizations. While we will be serving all markets, we will put special focus working with NTIA on a target list 

of 49 hot spots that are particularly risky. 

And we will deploy a viable call center system to respond to calls 

for help. We have been working closely with our industry partners 

to establish a single, nationwide number for consumers to call. Our 

cable and broadcast industries really stepped up to the plate on 

this. With a few months to go we can now take it to the next level 

to provide more in-depth training for agents to handle longer and 

more technical calls and to improve the tools available to them for 

handling problems and referring consumers to help centers and 

other resources. 

There is another problem I have briefly to mention. Signal coverage. For all of its bounty, the digital signal propagates differently 

than analog. Stronger in some places, it is weaker in others. For 

2 years I pressed without much success for more studies and analysis of these differences because in some cases viewers are not 

going to receive these signals even if they have their boxes and 

their antennas hooked up. We are trying to deal with this, but even 

with the things we can begin to do like distributed transmission 


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systems and fill-in translators, solutions are not going to be everywhere in place by June. 

I believe consumers have a right to know this, and that is why 

we are requiring stations to notify viewers of coverage problems, 

and that is why we launched a new tool on our Web site where consumers can type in their home addresses and find out what stations they should be able to receive and what kind of antennas they 

might need to receive them. 

Before I close I would like to recognize the efforts and sacrifices 

of our FCC team, as fine a group of public servants that I have encountered in my years in Washington. I thank my two friends and 

colleagues, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein and Rob McDowell 

for their tireless outreach and the leadership they and their staffs 

provide. 

I thank Assistant Secretary Gomez and her talented team at 

NTIA for bringing a real sense of urgency to our new level of interagency cooperation. Huge thanks go to industry, broadcast, cable, 

satellite, consumer electronics, retailers, and others. We have a 

real partnership with them now, like I have been pushing for for 

years. I thank all the consumer civil rights, religious, and public 

interest groups who worked on behalf of the citizens of this great 

country, and a final thanks to so many everyday citizens across 

this land who reach out to help a friend, a relative, or a neighbor. 

Tip O’Neil once said that all politics is local. Well, the DTV transition is local, too. In fact, it is downright personal, and it will require that personal touch if we are to succeed. Working together 

we can and we will make a huge difference for consumers. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. I would be 

happy to hear your comments, suggestions and try to respond to 

any questions that you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Copps follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Chairman Copps. 

Ms. Gomez. And you might pull that microphone a bit closer. 

STATEMENT OF ANNA GOMEZ 

Ms. GOMEZ. Thank you, Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member 

Stearns, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for your invitation to testify this morning on the DTV transition and the TV 

converter box coupon program. I am Anna Gomez, and I serve as 

the Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communication 

and Information. 

To date the coupon program has distributed 52.7 million coupons 

to more than 29 million U.S. households. Of these, consumers have 

redeemed nearly 26 million coupons at participating retailers for 

digital-to-analog converter boxes, and we will likely have many 

more requests for coupons before the program concludes. 

As you all are aware, the DTV transition and the coupon program were in a crisis situation at the beginning of this year when 

we hit our coupon funding limit and were forced to create a waiting 

list for millions of coupon requests. We have made much progress 

since then, but we still have much work to do. From my first day 

at NTIA last month I have made it a top priority to minimize the 

number of people who could lose over-the-air TV as a result of the 

analog shutoff. 

Thanks to the foresight and leadership of the President and Congress with the passage of the Delay Act last month, millions more 

people will have the opportunity to get prepared for the transition 

and to take advantage of the coupon program. 

In addition to extending the transition date, the Delay Act extended the deadline for coupon applications to July 31, authorized 

us to reissue coupons to consumers whose coupons expired without 

being redeemed, and provided use with flexibility to deliver coupons by faster means. The Recovery Act provided $650 million in funding to implement these new improvements. Of that at least $490 million will be used 

for the distribution of at least an additional 12.25 million coupons. 

Up to 90 million will be available for consumer education and technical assistance, and 70 million will cover the cost of distribution 

and other administrative expenses. 

We appreciate the flexibility Congress provided by permitting 

NTIA to increase the allocation for coupons and to prioritize coupon 

distribution to consumers totally reliant on over-the-air broadcast 

service if necessary. This flexibility will enable us to adjust quickly 

to meet the needs of this unprecedented effort. 

We also moved swiftly to make related modifications and improvements to our operational systems. In addition, we are now 

distributing all coupons using first class mail. All these actions are 

expected to reduce delivery time for coupons from 21 to 9 business 

days approximately. 

Most importantly I am pleased to report that 5 days ago the coupon program was able to eliminate entirely the waiting list for coupons. We are, again, able to fulfill coupon requests as they are received and approved. 

As important as these additional coupons and process improvements are to the success of the digital transition, our education and 


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outreach efforts are just as vital. We are tailoring these efforts to 

educate people of the various ways to become ready now for the 

digital transition, but it by obtaining a converter box with or without a coupon, by buying a digital television, or by subscribing to a 

pay television service. We want to do everything we can to ensure 

that those who need help can get it. 

We are also making improvements to our outreach efforts based 

on lessons we have learned. For example, beginning last month the 

FCC, NTIA, and the White House significantly ramped up our coordination and accelerated efforts to ensure consumers have the information and assistance they need. 

We are also redoubling our efforts with the public, private partnerships that have already helped millions of households prepare 

for the DTV transition. Our non-profit partners, for example, have 

served a vital feet-on-the-ground function to help inform the public 

of the new transition deadline and to assist those who still need to 

prepare. I would especially like to recognize the efforts of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Foundation and the 

National Association of Area Agencies on Aging or N4A, who receive NTIA grants to provide outreach and assistance to targeted 

populations. Thanks to the additional funds provided by Congress, 

NTIA grants to both of these organizations will be extended 

through the summer, allowing them to continue their outstanding 

efforts to help people prepare. 

We also have learned that more outreach to vulnerable populations is needed, along with new and creative approaches to reach 

these consumers. We are, therefore, recalibrating our messaging 

and outreach activities and undertaking various public education 

activities to respond to our current challenges. For example, in addition to running paid ad and public service advertising through 

radio and print outlets and on transit systems and bus shelters and 

key markets, we are developing new training modules that can be 

used by our partners, grantees, and others to ensure consistency 

and accuracy of our messaging. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, let me thank you again for extending the transition deadline and providing NTIA with criticallyneeded funding for additional coupons and consumer outreach. 

Thanks also to Chairman Copps, Commissioners Adelstein and 

McDowell, and the NTIA and FCC staff for their ongoing commitment to a successful DTV transition and for working with us to 

maximize our effectiveness. 

Finally, I would also like to note that Commerce Secretary Locke 

is fully committed to ensuring the success of the DTV transition 

and is already focused on the clarity and quality of our consumer 

education efforts. With all of us working together we can usher in 

a successful end to the DTV transition. 

And I will be happy to answer your questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Gomez follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Gomez, Chairman 

Copps. We appreciate your testimony this morning and congratulations to both of you on a job well done in managing this transition 

through a difficult, very difficult period. 

Ms. Gomez, as I suggested in my opening statement, I am concerned about whether or not there are going to be enough converter 

boxes available to meet the demand that will arise between the 

present time and June the 12th, and I make reference to the document which your office prepared with data as of 4:00 yesterday 

afternoon that indicates that there are currently about 9.2 million, 

almost 9.3 million active coupons in circulation. These are coupons 

that you have issued, that have been mailed, that as of this moment have not been redeemed. 

And I understand that the current redemption rate for coupons 

is approximately 60 percent. Is that correct? 

Ms. GOMEZ. That is right. 

Mr. BOUCHER. And so if you just do the simple math, 60 percent 

of 9.2 million would be 5.5 million converter boxes that we could 

expect to be claimed based upon redemptions of the coupons currently in circulation. And that number does not take into account 

the purchase of converter boxes without coupon support, some 

amount of which happens, and it certainly doesn’t take into account the new demand for converter boxes that will arise based on 

coupons issued from this day forward, which will be now on June 

the 12th. 

And so we can reasonably estimate that the demand for converter boxes is going to be well beyond this 5.5 million converter 

box number, and that is the number we know as of today based on 

the current redemption rate just on coupons already issued. 

The Consumer Electronics Association will testify later this 

morning that they anticipate only about 4.2 million converter boxes 

being needed all the way to June the 12th, and just based on the 

math I have done here and reported that seems to me to be a very 

low number. 

So my question to you is do you share that concern? And do you 

have any information that can enlighten up about the total projection of converter boxes that may be needed up until June 12? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. Actually, I do share that concern. We—about 

whether inventory—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Is your microphone on, Ms. Gomez? If not, pull 

it—— 

Ms. GOMEZ. I do share that concern. 

Mr. BOUCHER. All right. Good. 

Ms. GOMEZ. Sorry. About whether inventory levels will be sufficient to get us through the end of not just June 12 but the demand 

that will also follow beyond June 12. Up until now the inventory 

levels have been good, and we have terrific retailers that voluntarily participate in our program. In order to be able to participate 

in our program, they do have to follow some rules, and our rules 

require those participating retailers to maintain inventory at commercially-reasonable levels. 

In order to keep our retailers informed of the demand at least 

from the coupon program, we do have a specific program that is 

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quest rates. We do this by zip code. We have a lot of information 

on our Web site that is dedicated to providing retailer information. 

So our efforts are to ensure that retailers understand in their areas 

where they need to be maintaining a certain amount of inventory. 

And then retailers, if needed, can order boxes with sufficient 

amount of time. 

It was good news to hear I think at your last hearing that the 

manufacturers were going to be able to manufacture boxes in a 

shorter timeframe, but it certainly is something that is worth keeping an eye on because if every coupon is redeemed, there won’t be 

sufficient boxes to meet that demand. 

Mr. BOUCHER. OK. Thank you very much. Let me ask you one 

additional question. Some on this panel have suggested that you 

should only send coupons to over-the-air-only households. In other 

words, households that have no cable or satellite subscription but 

rely completely on over-the-air television to receive service. 

I disagree with that. I think those households clearly should be 

the priority—— 

Ms. GOMEZ. Uh-huh. 

Mr. BOUCHER [continuing]. But I think that households that 

have a cable or satellite subscription but perhaps have televisions 

on a different floor where the cable or satellite wires don’t run and 

where those televisions are over-the-air dependent should be able 

to get coupons to the extent that you have coupons available to 

supply them. 

So my question to you is what is your approach, and what will 

be your approach going toward June 12 in terms of the homes to 

which you are supplying coupons pursuant to requests? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. NTIA does share the concerns that completely 

unprepared households are able to prepare themselves before the 

transition date. Our current program, thanks to the delay, we were 

able to change our rules so that we are, in fact, able to prioritize 

over-the-air household coupon requests should the need arise. We 

are going to carefully monitor the number of requests that we get 

to make sure that if we get ourselves into another situation where 

we see a possible end of our funding limit, then we can begin 

prioritizing over-the-air households and make sure that they get 

those coupons. 

Mr. BOUCHER. But at the present time you are honoring requests 

without regard to whether they are over-the-air only or households 

that simply need converter boxes. Is that correct? 

Ms. GOMEZ. That is correct. We are honoring requests for all 

households that apply for the coupon. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Let me encourage you to continue doing that, 

prioritizing as need be to the over-the-air-only households. They 

should be the first priority. But to the extent that you have coupon 

availability beyond those, you should also honor the requests coming from households that simply need converter boxes but also 

have a cable or satellite subscription. 

My time has expired, but I am going to take the liberty of asking 

Mr. Copps a question, and I will be generous with other members. 

Mr. Copps, you mentioned in your testimony the problems associated with the fact that digital signals do not have the same propagation characteristics as analog signals, and there will be houseVerDate Mar 15 2010 08:55 Mar 02, 2012 Jkt 067820 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A820.XXX A820

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holds that can get an analog signal from a given television station 

that when this transition occurs will not get the digital signal from 

that same station. Implying, of course, the need to do something 

about antenna readjustment or antenna replacement. 

And you and I have both been to White Haven, England, and 

seen firsthand the circumstances that pertained there when they 

transitioned to digital a couple of years ago. And what struck me 

on that visit was the extraordinary number of antennas that had 

to be replaced entirely. It was more than 10 percent of the total. 

And we are now seeing that problem arise here in some of the markets that have transitioned, and we have concern that additional 

rural areas in particular will experience this problem on June the 

12th. 

And so my question to you broadly spoken is what are you doing 

to assist in getting people prepared for this eventuality, and what 

should we be thinking about in terms of aiding you in that effort? 

Mr. COPPS. Well, it requires, I think, a new level of education, 

and this was not a message that went out early enough. Again, I 

think if we had had the kind of public sector, private sector partnership I have been harping for for 2 years, we would have identified a problem like this much earlier on than the time that we actually did. We focus so much on the boxes, boxes, boxes, and people 

got their boxes, and then ran into these antenna problems. So we 

are requiring in the consumer education that stations do, going forward that we educate people about the antenna problem. 

We have a new tool on our FCC DTV webpage to instruct people 

on the strength of the signals coming into their specific zip code. 

You can just type in your zip code, and you will find the stations 

and that strength that they are broadcasting at and the direction 

they are coming from, help you to aim your antenna and things 

like that. But there is, you know, you could have 5 or 10 percent 

of the people that are going to experience this problem. It is not 

going to be resolved by June. We should have done these kinds of 

studies much earlier on and identify the problem. There are things 

we can do. We are trying to get distributed transition systems 

going to strengthen signals and all that, but they all take time, and 

they take money for a hard-pressed industry right now. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Copps, Ms. Gomez. 

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Stearns, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Gomez, welcome to our committee and for your first time I 

suspect, and so we appreciate that. The gentleman from New York 

indicated this is totally mismanaged. Of course, Mr. Markey was 

chairman the last 2 years and Mr. Upton, distinguished gentleman 

from Michigan, they had hearing after hearing, so I don’t know if 

mismanagement is a good appellation to put on this because I 

think they were on top of it. 

In fact, you heard Ms. Blackburn indicate that no one had any 

problem with the transition in her Congressional district. Mr. 

Terry indicated there were 33 calls out of 412,000 households. And 

Mr. Upton in his Congressional district in Michigan had one call, 

and my Congressional district we transitioned also. 


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So I appreciate everybody’s apprehension here about this being 

mismanaged, but I think the evidence so far has been that it seems 

to be working at least in several of the Congressional districts here 

on the Republican side, so—and I commend Mr. Markey and Mr. 

Upton for all the work they did on this. 

Assistant Secretary Gomez, the theory behind this delay was 

that 5 percent were unprepared homes. The stimulus legislation 

obviously gave an extremely wide latitude on how to spend this 

roughly $650 million in additional funding. Shouldn’t we just spend 

$350 million to cover two redeemed coupons for each remaining unprepared, exclusively over-the-air home and return the rest of the 

money, which I think would be a good signal to the people out 

there in American that we are trying to do things with less money 

and return what we don’t need? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Well, under the Act and our goals are to provide the 

coupons to every requesting household as you know. So while we 

do share the concern about making sure that over-the-air households are prepared, as I mentioned, we are going to make sure that 

they are able to provide the coupons to those households if we end 

up in another situation where we have a wait list possible. And so 

what we knew back in January was that we had about 6.5 million 

households unprepared. Since that time we have been able to provide coupons to 1.2 million over-the-air households, so we are making progress. We want to make sure that we are able to provide 

the coupons to the households that aren’t themselves prepared for 

the rest of this time. And we are going to monitor carefully. 

Mr. STEARNS. Well, have you ruled out the possibility that you 

will return money? Because there is a lot of people have coupons, 

there are seven million coupons that have been unredeemed and 

then with this new money you will have totally more, even if you 

take out the administration costs and the education costs, you are 

still going to have a lot of money. You will have I conjecture almost 

20 million coupons out there, and you got four million homes times 

two is eight million, so you could possibly have more coupons than 

households that need it. Is there a possibility in your mind that 

you would return the money that you don’t use? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Well, any money that goes unused will be returned 

at the end of the program. 

Mr. STEARNS. Well, OK. In the legislation the stimulus package 

allowed the NTIA to transfer some or all of the 90 million in consumer education funds to the FCC so as long as give the House and 

Senate appropriator the five-day advanced notice, has the NTIA 

transferred any money to the FCC yet? 

Ms. GOMEZ. No. The money hasn’t been transferred yet. In fact, 

we have our request to Congress prepared, and that should be coming shortly. That will delineate how the FCC plans to use that 

money. 

Mr. STEARNS. And how much are you talking about? 

Ms. GOMEZ. We are talking about $65 million at this point. 

Mr. STEARNS. How did you come up with $55 million as opposed to $20 million or $100 million? How did you come up with $55 million? 

Ms. GOMEZ. It is actually $65 million. We worked—— 

Mr. STEARNS. Sixty-five. 


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Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. 

Mr. STEARNS. Not $55. It is—— 

Ms. GOMEZ. Right. It is $65. 

Mr. STEARNS. How did it go from $55 to $65? Just a slip? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. 

Mr. STEARNS. Wow. Ten million dollars. 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. We worked with the FCC closely, and they 

came up with the projections of what they would need. They sent 

us a request, and we did take a look at it. We will be providing, 

like I said, a letter that delineates how specifically each of those 

categories are going to be used. 

Mr. STEARNS. Can you send that letter to Chairman Boucher and 

myself? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Certainly. 

Mr. STEARNS. I mean, that would be—I think, Mr. Boucher, you would like a copy of that, and I would like to—whether it is $55 

or $65. 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. 

Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Copps, she indicated that the FCC was intimately involved or involved with coming up with this request. You 

might want to comment. 

Mr. COPPS. Yes. We are looking at, as I said, a new level of consumer education and outreach. We are planning to use those millions and put out some requests for proposal in the very near future which will help to ensure that the call center operation is up 

and running and calibrated the way it should be for help centers 

and in-home assistance and for media buys and public relations. 

Because the request for proposals have not gone out yet, they tell 

me it is best not to get into saying how much in each one of those 

categories because you can kind of mess up the bidding process in 

doing that, and I have no desire to do that. But I think based on 

the proposals that we have put forward and also some of the work 

we are talking about with AmeriCorps and the fire fighters, that 

it is going to be a tremendous return on investment. A lot of this 

is going to be just getting processes going with the fire fighters and 

with AmeriCorps, and they will mobilize, but a lot of the labor that 

will come to it will be volunteer labor. So I think we are going to 

get a really good return on the investment. 

Mr. STEARNS. OK. Mr. Copps, I just wanted to congratulate—you 

and I are probably the only ones talking about during this transition having a demonstration project, and I remember when you 

came to my office, you and I both agreed and—— 

Mr. COPPS. Right. 

Mr. STEARNS [continuing]. There is very few of us that did, and 

as it turned out we did a demonstration project in Wilmington, 

North Carolina, and you know, the chairman of the FCC was up 

here, and it turned out it was very successful. Obviously there were 

some people that did call but relative to the percentage it worked 

very well, which I think went to another part of our attempt to try 

and manage this. 

So with that, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stearns. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Dingell, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 


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Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, first, Mr. Copps and Ms. Gomez, 

congratulations. Welcome to the committee. 

Mr. COPPS. Thank you. 

Mr. DINGELL. Ms. Gomez, as you are aware, NTIA during the 

previous Administration stated to this subcommittee that it had 

adequate funding with which to meet consumer demand for digital 

television converter boxes. As we have learned, this was quite untrue. 

What have you done to correct this situation? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes, sir. Well, thanks to the additional money that 

Congress provided to us through the Recovery Act, we are able 

now, we were able last week to clear out the wait list of coupons 

and now to dedicate more resources to funding coupon requests. 

Mr. DINGELL. Will you have sufficient funds to meet your charges 

under the law? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Well, I certainly hope so. 

Mr. DINGELL. Hope won’t do when you got a bunch of bad consumers. 

Ms. GOMEZ. That is correct, which is why what we are doing is 

retargeting and refocusing our efforts, because we want to make 

sure that those consumers that need this program the most are 

educated and understand their need to get that money today, get 

the coupons today so that they can prepare themselves immediately. 

Mr. DINGELL. See, I saw when we did this, we first gave NTIA 

$5 million to publicize it. That was clearly not enough. We gave 

you more money later, I think $90 million. And we now find ourselves in a situation, though, where I see nothing going on out 

there in terms of public information flow to the consumers about 

this. So I am curious. Will you commit to us to keeping us fully informed about the status of the level of funding and the availability 

of coupons and the availability of the converter boxes? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. I will commit to do that. We will continue to 

provide information. 

Mr. DINGELL. Now, Ms. Gomez, how does NTIA currently predict 

consumer demands for those coupons? 

Ms. GOMEZ. We actually don’t have a prediction today for what 

the consumer demand will be. We have been able to learn—— 

Mr. DINGELL. Don’t you need to know that? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Well, the truth is now that we are reissuing, we are 

permitting the reissuance of coupons for consumers that had their 

coupons expire, we expect to have demand increase, but we need 

to monitor over the next several weeks to see now that we have advertised the availability of reissuance to see how much that increases the level of demand from consumers today. 

Mr. DINGELL. We have given you additional time, additional 

money, and you now have until some time in June when you have 

got to see to it that you have gotten all your coupons out, you got 

all your coupons back, everybody has got a converter box so we 

don’t have a bunch of mad consumers on our hands. And I can just 

tell you that I anticipate full well we are going to have some angry 

people calling our offices about the fact that this has not been properly handled. 


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How can you assure us that you are going to meet your deadline, 

and how can you ensure us that you are going to have the adequate number of coupons, the adequate number of boxes, and that 

they are going to be in place? 

Ms. GOMEZ. We are planning for making sure that we target the 

populations that most need this type of help, because it is true, you 

are actually right, the coupon program isn’t going to be what 

makes sure that by June 12 all consumers don’t call your offices. 

So what we have to do is dedicate our resources to making sure 

that we provide both the technical assistance, which is what the 

FCC is working on, as well as make sure there are community 

partnerships or public, private partnerships, our friends in the 

broadcast industry and the cable industry, continue to help us to 

provide that assistance to consumers. That is the way that we are 

going to be able to make sure that the outreach is there, even if 

we don’t—— 

Mr. DINGELL. You have not comforted me. 

Mr. Copps, you have indicated in your testimony that you have 

new problems which apparently are coming to my attention for the 

first time with regard to how the difference in coverage in the service areas of analog versus digital is going to impact. What are you 

doing to make sure that we are going to have full service across 

the entire service area of these new digital broadcasting operations? 

Mr. COPPS. We are not going to be able to ensure that we have 

full coverage of digital signals in current broadcasting areas. We 

are going to try to alleviate the problem that is out there. We are 

going to try to educate consumers to the extent of the problem to 

forewarn them and hopefully to forearm them by calling upon the 

stations to help us to get that message out, and then try to encourage whatever technical solutions are realizable between now and 

June, but as I said in my statement, things like putting up new 

translator stations, distributing transmission systems are time consuming and costly. So this is one of those problems that, again, because of the lack of coordination didn’t come to everybody’s visibility soon enough. 

Mr. DINGELL. So lack of coordination between who? FCC, NTIA? 

Mr. COPPS. No. I think the lack of, the lack for the last few years 

of a really coordinated public, private sector partnership where we 

really had interagency coordination. I was part of the Y2K exercise 

in the previous Administration, the two previous Administrations 

ago. I was Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and I knew what a 

coordinated interagency, public sector, private sector partnership 

looked like where the leadership was involved, where we were coordinated with the White House, all the agencies were there, and 

we were contacting business and identifying problems early on and 

making mid-course corrections and devising solutions. We are trying to invent that kind of process here in the last 2 months that 

should have been up and running 2 years ago. 

Mr. DINGELL. And that is one of the unfortunate things. Mr. 

Copps, you have indicated that FCC is working with NTIA to develop a list of hot spots to ensure a more targeted consumer approach. How have FCC and NTIA determined these hot spots, and 

are both of your agencies confident that this approach is success, 


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and what more has to be done? I will ask you to respond and Ms. 

Gomez also. 

Mr. COPPS. Well, I am hopeful. We are working to identify those 

hot spots, and there are some 49 of them based on the latest Neilson data on DMA numbers, percentages of over-the-air households, 

coupon requests, redemption rates, poverty rates, a whole bunch of 

different criteria to really show us where the most vulnerable areas 

are and where we need to be devoting the limited resources that 

we are capable of deploying for this. 

Mr. DINGELL. So the answer is you don’t really have the resources you need to identify these areas. 

Mr. COPPS. Well, we are identifying them. We will have hopefully 

additional resources. Again, not enough that I am going to sit here 

and guarantee that everything is going to go assumingly well. 

Mr. DINGELL. Ms. Gomez, do you have adequate resources, and 

are you in any better shape than Mr. Copps, the FCC, are in to 

address this problem? 

Ms. GOMEZ. I can say that we are working very hard to address 

the problem, and we are very grateful for the ability to work with 

the FCC. 

Mr. DINGELL. So your answer is you have not solved the problem. 

Do you have the resources you need to address it in the time that 

you confront between now and the 12th of June? 

Ms. GOMEZ. I do think we have the resources, particularly with 

the resources that we got from the Recovery Act from the Congress. 

Mr. DINGELL. I have used 2 minutes and 44 seconds more than 

my time, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to you and the members of the 

committee. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Your questioning has enlightened all of us, and the time was certainly well 

spent. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Upton, is recognized for 7 

minutes. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I am not going to use 

all my time because we have been notified we are going to have 

a series of votes on the floor momentarily. So I do want to—just 

a couple things. 

First, I guess some of us won’t be here for the second panel. I 

want to praise particularly in Michigan, all of our folks, the NAB 

and others, they did really a terrific job in getting the word out. 

They actually did polling in Michigan, and I want to say something 

like 95 percent of the folks knew that they had to make some 

change, and I will make a little joke at the expense of my guy here, 

Joe Barton. Joe Barton was so convinced. He has cable now. This 

is a new thing for him, but even Joe was asking about how to get 

a cable box and hope Mr. Copps, he might be able to go help him 

hook it up, and I assured him that that was really not the case and 

not needed. 

But in all kidding aside, the industry and the cable folks just did 

a marvelous job, and our broadcasters and particularly I did a 

number of things with my local broadcasters in Kalamazoo and 

South Bend, two markets that cover our district in southwest 

Michigan, and with our retailers, and looked at a number of different folks, and it worked without a hitch. And some of them have 


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changed, and of course, when I worked with Mr. Markey and Mr. 

Boucher as well, and obviously Mr. Barton and Mr. Dingell as we 

crafted this legislation a number of years ago, this was the number 

one recommendation by the 9/11 Commission. Get it done, because 

if we have something else happen, this is the number on thing to 

make sure that our citizens were, are protected in the future. 

And they trashed, frankly, the 9/11 Commission trashed the Congress 2 or 3 years ago when they didn’t think we had moved fast 

enough, and of course, that was one of the reasons that a number 

of us objected to the delay because the word was out. And a number of us coauthored, Mr. Stearns was a big part of that, too, legislation that was introduced at the end of, I think in the last session 

as well as the beginning of this session, legislation that would actually provide the accounting fix to allow the coupons still to go out, 

but we just wouldn’t take it down from the spending until they 

were actually redeemed rather than when they were mailed out. Of 

course, you have a number of coupons that were never used, and 

you have got a number of them that are still laying in someone’s 

desk, in their desk drawer for maybe weeks to come until they go 

to Sears or Best Buy, wherever they have to go. 

But my question is this, and before I yield back, it is fairly clear 

when you look at the numbers that we are going to have a number 

of coupons, A, never redeemed, the $650 million that was in the 

stimulus package, I think the number was about what, four million 

homes not being serviced as of March 1 in terms of over-the-air. Is 

that right, Ms.—so if you—and yet we provided enough money in 

the stimulus for 12 million coupons, so if you have got four million 

unredeemed homes, and they each get two coupons, and they really 

need them unlike Joe Barton, you are going to have hundreds of 

millions of dollars that is never going to be, need to be spent? 

Right? 

So what happens to that money in June? What happens to the 

money that is not used because we have done too many of these 

coupons or they are never redeemed? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Well, at the end of the program any money that is 

left over will be de-obligated. It will be returned to the Treasury. 

Mr. UPTON. And will that be—and when will that decision be 

made? Because, of course, the transition date is June 12. So let us 

say someone says, oh, it might finally be time. We will use Mr. 

Shimkus’s example. April 15 with taxes, June 12, so maybe they 

call that 800 number or get online or figure out how to do it. 

Maybe they go June 5, they get the coupon, so it is really good 

until August or September. Right? At what point do you actually 

say enough is enough? 

Ms. GOMEZ. Yes. Under the law we were able to extend the date 

or the law extended the date for folks to apply for coupons to July 

31. So if you take into account processing—— 

Mr. UPTON. That will take you to the end of the fiscal year. 

So—— 

Ms. GOMEZ. Further beyond that I would think. 

Mr. UPTON. Yes. So what—so the un-obligated balance, what 

happens to that? At what point do you say, Treasury, here is your 

money back? I hope you say that. 


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Ms. GOMEZ. I don’t know if there is a specific deadline for that. 

I am sorry. I would have to go back and make sure I checked that. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Copps, do you know? Do you all weigh in on that 

decision at all or not? Are you completely out of that? With the 

money. 

Mr. COPPS. No. I don’t know. Technically it would go back, I 

would assume, if we are going to go out of the coupon granting 

business, and you give it the time to get those redeemed, and at 

that time the money is left over, it goes back. I would hope that 

would be before the end of the fiscal year, but I can’t tell you. 

Mr. UPTON. And Ms. Gomez, what happens to the—if you have 

got, you know, millions of coupons that perhaps don’t actually get 

delivered, is there still a fee that I guess in this case, what, IBM 

would collect? I mean, is there still a processing fee that is paid out 

to the private sector for those or not? 

Ms. GOMEZ. You know, that is a good question, and I am sorry. 

I am going to have to get back to you on that one because I am 

not sure how exactly under the contract the—what—how exactly 

those fees are—— 

Mr. UPTON. I know the votes are starting. I will yield back my 

time. Thank you. Thank you both. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Upton. We have votes 

now pending on the floor but I think time for one more member 

to ask questions, and I am pleased to recognize the gentlelady from 

Florida, Ms. Castor, for 5 minutes. 

Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Would you all address 

the status of the call centers? Are you finding that the call centers 

have adequate capacity to handle current volumes of calls? Do we 

have enough bilingual operators? What are the wait times that 

callers can expect, and then what plans do you have in place to 

handle the surge in calls on and after the transition date? 

Mr. COPPS. Well, we are in the process of getting ready to put 

out a request for proposal for our call centers to mutrice the FCC 

call center. That is already existent. There were some problems 

with that. We are working mightily to correct those, I think most 

of them, and did a fine job. I was up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 

where our call center is located a couple of weeks ago, and the 

agents up there were saying we really would like to have more 

training. So now we have an opportunity to do more training and 

give them a level of technical proficiency and responsiveness that 

they presently don’t have. So we are going to be working on that. 

With regard to the bilingual, no, we don’t have enough. I think 

you can make the case, and my friend Colin McSlarough in the 

cable industry has observed that only 2 percent of Hispanics lived 

in areas that have completed transitioned already, but 13 percent 

of the calls that came in were from Spanish-speaking people. So I 

think if we play this out a little bit, you are going to see that we 

are going to have to have the ability to do much better with regard 

to that. 

I want to make one other response on the call center thing, 

though, too, because lots of folks are saying, well, you didn’t get all 

those calls. I would also note that we have had 141⁄2 million hits 

on our Internet site, and you know, we all got to kind of acclimate 

ourselves to the new world we live in, but I suspect perhaps a perVerDate Mar 15 2010 08:55 Mar 02, 2012 Jkt 067820 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A820.XXX A820

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centage of those people who might otherwise have taken to the 

telephones have gone on the Internet. We are trying to put better 

tools and help up there to inform them, and I think that is something we need to take into our calculation as we go forward, too, 

but we are cognizant of the limitations we had on the program, and 

we are dedicated to trying to make it better. Industry was a huge 

help in the period leading up to February 17. They continue and 

will continue their call center operations until the middle of April, 

and then we will have to adjust after that and make sure that we 

can handle everything through the other resources that exist. 

Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, and I will yield back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Castor. 

Mr. Weiner, actually, Mr. Radanovich has joined us from California, and he would be next in the order. We have bills pending 

on the floor. It would be nice if we could excuse this panel without 

having to come back. After the gentleman perhaps asks 2 minutes 

worth of questions and—— 

Mr. RADANOVICH. I got one question to ask. That will be great. 

Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it and thank you 

for being here. 

Assistant Secretary Gomez, the Delay Act allows the NTIA to 

issue downloadable coupons. My understanding, however, is that 

both the NTIA and retailers have previously expressed fraud and 

implementation problems with downloadable coupons. Are you still 

considering using downloadable coupons? 

Ms. GOMEZ. No. We have decided not to issue downloadable coupons. It is my belief that a year ago downloadable coupons would 

have been a really good idea. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Uh-huh. 

Ms. GOMEZ. Unfortunately, with the short amount of time that 

we have left and the population that we have left to reach, it was 

our feeling both for purposes of trying to develop something that 

would withstand waste, fraud, and abuse issues, as well as something that would be usable, it would probably be a little too late 

by the time we got the systems up and running. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. OK. All right. Thank you very much. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Radanovich. 

Mr. Weiner from New York. 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you. I will be brief. First of all, I signed up 

for a coupon several weeks ago, and it hasn’t arrived, so I don’t 

know. Maybe you can look it up. It is you know, Askan Avenue, 

Forest Hills, New York. 

Mr. Copps, is there any way of telling whether we are going to 

have wide-scale problems in large urban areas where there is all 

kinds of different topography that is guided by tall buildings, sometimes parks, sometimes communities, suburban communities where 

sometimes the broadcast signal has to pass through a city to get 

to the suburbs? Do we have any good, I mean, I know there have 

been a couple of times I have read that there have been tests they 

flipped off in the middle of the night just to see how it works. 

Do we have any sense whether that is going to be a problem? 

Mr. COPPS. I have that sense, I guess it would be largely anecdotal from traveling around, that there are, indeed, going to be 


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problems. Everywhere I go I run into people who are experiencing 

such problems already. So there is no question in my mind but that 

they exist, and we are going to have to deal with them. Again, I 

think that we were remiss in not getting those kind of studies done 

and on the shelf long before we got into these waning months of 

the transition. 

And those large urban areas also worry me, not just because of 

the technical limitations of the—and the propagation characteristics of the digital signal, but because there are so many low-income 

people there, and there are so many people for whom English is not 

the primary language, and they are more difficult to reach, and 

there are seniors there and minorities there. 

So that is where a tremendous part of our outreach—— 

Mr. WEINER. But even if it is running well, even if the system 

runs well, even if it gets there, I mean, do we have a good sense 

in a city like New York, for example, where a lot of people already 

have their antennas and they are hooked up. Do we have a sense 

whether the signal is reaching them? I mean, to some degree we 

are going to have a problem and some people are going to fear that 

they just hooked it up wrong, it is going to be a problem like on 

that level. But do we have a sense that the technology is going to 

reach these people? 

Mr. COPPS. I think in most cases if you have done everything 

right with the computer, with the converter boxes and the antenna 

and all the rest, you are going to be all right, but it is not going 

to be ubiquitous, and there are going to be those people calling 

your office and my office who say, hey, I listened to you. I got the 

box, I got the antenna, I know I am aimed in the right direction, 

and I am still not getting the signal. What are you going to do 

about it? 

Mr. WEINER. Well, I appreciate it. 

Mr. COPPS. I hear that wherever I go. 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you, and in knowing how government bureaucracy sometimes engages in overkill, I just need one, I don’t 

need seven people showing up at my house. I don’t need 200 of 

them showing, just that one will be great. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Weiner. 

I am going to ask unanimous consent that NTIA’s weekly converter boxes coupon program status update be placed in the record. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

Thanks to this panel. You have done an excellent job. Your testimony this morning has also been very enlightening. We appreciate 

you joining us. We have seven votes pending on the floor, and that 

means the next panel will take up when we can return. 

So until that point probably 45 minutes to an hour from now, 

this subcommittee stands in recess. 

[Recess]. 

Mr. BOUCHER. The subcommittee will reconvene. My apologies 

for the lateness of the time here. 

We now welcome our second panel for the afternoon. Mr. Mark 

Lloyd is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for the Leadership 

Conference on Civil Rights, Mr. Peter Morrill is the General Manager of Idaho Public Television, Mr. Robert Prather Jr. is the President of Gray Television, Mr. Gary Severson is Senior Vice PresiVerDate Mar 15 2010 08:55 Mar 02, 2012 Jkt 067820 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A820.XXX A820

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dent and General Manager of Entertainment for the Wal-Mart 

Stores, Mr. Gary Shapiro is President and Chief Executive Officer 

of the Consumer Electronics Association, and Mr. Christopher 

Wood is Vice President, Senior Legal Counsel, and DTV Compliance Officer for Univision Communications. We welcome each of 

our witnesses and without objection your prepared written statement will be made a part of the record. We would welcome now 

your oral presentations and ask that you keep those to approximately 5 minutes. 

And Mr. Wood, we will be pleased to begin with you. 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER WOOD, VICE PRESIDENT, SENIOR LEGAL COUNSEL, AND DTV COMPLIANCE OFFICER, 

UNIVISION COMMUNICATIONS INC.; GARY SEVERSON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GENERAL MANAGER, ENTERTAINMENT, WAL-MART STORES; GARY SHAPIRO, PRESIDENT AND 

CEO, CONSUMER ELECTRONICS ASSOCIATION; PETER MORRILL, GENERAL MANAGER, IDAHO PUBLIC TELEVISION; 

MARK LLOYD, VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC INITIATIVES, 

LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS; AND ROBERT 

S. PRATHER JR., PRESIDENT, GRAY TELEVISION, INC. 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER WOOD 

Mr. WOOD. Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member Stearns and 

members of the subcommittee, my name is Chris Wood, and I am 

Vice President and Senior Legal Counsel of Univision Communications where I have responsibility for DTV compliance matters. I appreciate very much the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon about our efforts to ensure that the Hispanic community is 

prepared for the digital transition, together with our public and 

private partners. 

Univision is the country’s leading Spanish language media company. Our assets include the Univision Network, the TeleFutura 

Broadcast Network, which provide an array of news, information, 

sports, and entertainment programming. We also own and operate 

more than three dozen full-powered television stations, which will 

be making the transition to digital television. 

But Univision is more than just a broadcasting company. Our 

stations and our networks are integral parts of the community and 

the culture of U.S. Hispanic households. Spanish language viewers 

depend on Univision or Univision for not just sports and entertainment programming but also as an essential and reliable source of 

news, weather, and emergency information. And a significant number of the viewers who rely on Univision also rely exclusively on 

over-the-air television. 

So the impact of the digital transition is particularly important 

to our company. When our CEO, Joe Uva, testified before this subcommittee in October of 2007, he told you that Univision was committed to being an industry leader in educating and information 

viewers about the upcoming digital transition. That month 

Univision launched Una Neuva Aira Ava de Vial, our campaign to 

prepare Hispanics and Spanish-speaking television viewers for the 

digital transition. 


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That was 6 months before the FCC required any broadcaster to 

undertake DTV educational initiatives. Since launching that campaign Univision has created and broadcast four half-hour DTV specials. We have included DTV educational messages in our most 

popular programming. We have covered transition issues in our national and local news and public affairs programs, and we have 

aired well over 100,000 DTV educational PSAs, featuring members 

of Congress and Univision personalities. 

Univision also hosts a Spanish-language DTV transition Web site 

that has received over seven million page views. Univision has 

used its strong ties to the local Hispanic communities and its markets to launch a grass root initiative that we call Es Quadron de 

Hital, or digital squads, in which our stations have reached out directly to their communities through local activities. Altogether 

Univision has sponsored more than 250 community events in its 

markets. 

For example, we have hosted 25 town hall meetings that have 

been attended by thousands of viewers. We have also supported 

events hosted by members of Congress in their own districts. We 

have organized and funded phone banks. We have participated in 

48 soft analog tests to help our analog viewers determine whether 

they are prepared for DTV. 

Univision was fully prepared to complete the DTV transition on 

the original cutoff date of February 17. Now that the transition has 

been extended to June 12, we realize that more remains to be done 

in the community. Many Hispanic households have yet to achieve 

an acceptable state of DTV readiness. Although Neilson reports 

that Hispanic households are less prepared for the digital transition than the general population, it is also clear that our outreach 

efforts are working and that the preparedness gap between Hispanic households and households at large has diminished significantly over the past 3 months. 

So mindful of our unique connection to the Hispanic community, 

Univision will focus now on continuing educational and informational efforts on the steps viewers need to take in order to be fully 

prepared to receive digital signals by the June 12 transition date. 

We are working as we speak today to implement the expanded 

DTV consumer education requirements now required by the FCC. 

I would like to acknowledge the leadership and the guidance of 

Chairman Boucher and Ranking Member Stearns and, of course, 

their staffs. Your support is critical to enabling us to ensure that 

all viewers, especially the Hispanic viewers who depend on our 

service to their communities, are prepared for the transition. 

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss our efforts, and I would be glad to answer any questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Woods follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Wood. 

Mr. Severson. 

STATEMENT OF GARY SEVERSON 

Mr. SEVERSON. Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member Stearns, 

and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to appear before your subcommittee on behalf of Wal-Mart Stores and 

the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition or CERC. 

Since joining Wal-Mart in 1994, I have managed a variety of 

merchandising departments. I am currently Senior Vice President 

and General Manager of Entertainment, which includes electronics. 

I believe that we are going to complete our transition to digital 

television successfully. Aside from Congressional oversight, much of 

the credit for a successful converter boxes program should go to the 

leadership and staff of the NTIA past and present. CERC is also 

working with the FCC staff very constructively today on the final 

and crucial stages of consumer education and outreach. We are 

proud that retailers’ training and education efforts have received 

high marks from the FCC. As other CERC witnesses have told the 

subcommittee, the DTV transition has been a professional experience without precedent, made more complex and challenging by adjustments to the program. 

Wal-Mart’s converter box demand increased in the days leading 

up to each local transition, but we have been meeting each challenge and are confident we will meet the final ones. Wal-Mart has 

worked to ensure that our customers are aware of the transition. 

Our stores have featured the converter boxes through special displays, a 30-second video running in the electronics area, a countdown clock to February 17, print advertising space, and in-store 

signing. 

In advertising terms alone we value in the millions of dollars the 

time that Wal-Mart’s in-store video network devoted to educating 

our customers about the DTV transition. Wal-Mart, like other 

CERC members, has participated in community-based efforts to 

reach the underserved population, including FCC-sponsored field 

activities and the successful DTV Road Show Education Campaign, 

which made many stops at Wal-Mart stores across the country. 

Conversations will continue—excuse me. Conversions will continue one by one through June 9 with the balance of television stations transitioning on June 12. Communicating clear, concise, market-specific advice to consumers over this period will be a particular challenge. Currently we are changing signs in our stores to 

direct consumers to Web sites and telephone numbers to obtain the 

most accurate and up-to-date local information. We are also considering new in-store electronic messaging for our TV wall and point 

of sale. 

Wal-Mart remains a leading seller of coupon-eligible converters. 

Over 90 percent of our converter sales have been made with the assistance of coupons. To date all of our models have been sold under 

$50, a highly-competitive price among retailers. 

Once we saw that the coupon waiting list would be cleared, we 

started air freighting converter boxes to our stores. As the weeks 

progress, we will be very well situated to serve anticipated future 

demand of our customers through the end of June. Projecting store 


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needs on a weekly basis we are generally able to restock very 

quickly and remedy gaps in supply. Minor delays have occurred 

only when external events upset the supply or demand cycles. We 

have not been encountering many consumer problems as customers 

understand that fluctuating inventory levels has been a fluid situation. 

With antennas, like others, we have seen a noticeable increase 

in demand. Antennas that offer the most consumer satisfaction are 

those at each end of the price range; the least expensive set-top antennas and the more expensive rooftop antennas. Wal-Mart is making additional antenna purchases for the balance of this year in 

both categories. We think that we will be able to serve our customers well as their remaining local stations move to their final 

power frequency and tower position. 

While our converters have had a very low rate of return compared to average electronics products, our rate, our return rate on 

antennas has been somewhat higher. As consumers find the models 

that best suit their own needs, we understand that other electronics retailers are seeing similar return rates on antennas. 

While we will focus on addressing the needs of our customers in 

the store, we encourage all stakeholders to focus on educating viewers on what to do after returning home. We are pleased with efforts 

that encourage viewers to rescan converter boxes frequently to capture additional channels. 

Wal-Mart is pleased to testify today, Chairman Boucher. Thank 

you. Additionally as we look ahead, we hope to work closely with 

the committee in addressing energy use and recycling issues, especially as they pertain to electronics. I will be happy to answer any 

questions you may have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Severson follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Severson. 

Mr. Shapiro. 

STATEMENT OF GARY SHAPIRO 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Chairman Boucher, Chairman Dingell, Mr. Shimkus, thank you so much, members of the subcommittee for inviting 

me to testify on behalf of the Consumer Electronics Association. 

I have three main points. First, the DTV transition has been and 

will continue to be an incredibly successful partnership between 

government and all affected industries, the most successful in our 

history. 

Second, as the results of the February 17 date demonstrate, consumer experience with the DTV transition has been overwhelmingly positive. With our most recent survey of the market we see 

ample evidence to suggest that manufacturers and retailers will 

continue to meet consumer demand for converter boxes and antennas. 

Finally, in light of the program’s success and the enormous benefits arising from the migration to the digital spectrum, we ask that 

you not again delay the transition beyond June 12. We represent the $172 billion United States consumer electronics 

industry. We have over 2,200 corporate members, including manufacturers, retailers, distributors of digital televisions, antennas, 

converter boxes, and a range of other products. 

More relevant for this hearing, though, this is the industry that 

invented digital television, and I even have a deep personal stake 

in the success. I was here over 20 years ago when this committee 

held the very first hearing, and indeed, my wife and I met over a 

chairlift when I overheard her talking on her cell phone about digital television. And I innocently asked, what is this thing called 

HDTV she was talking about. I am so passionate about digital television that my tombstone will be 16 by 9 aspect ratio. 

Well, we have almost reached the end of this 20-year process. We 

worked with broadcasters at WRC here in Washington to establish 

the first DTV broadcast station in ’96. We helped create the advanced television test center to test all the different proponents, 

and we are a founding member of the Advanced Television Systems 

Committee, which set the standards for DTV. And we have helped 

lead the effort to educate the public about the transition. 

We helped found the DTV Transition Coalition, which now has 

200 diverse groups, a group whose mission to ensure that not one 

consumer in the United States loses broadcast television service 

due to a lack of information. And our aggressive effort outreach 

have reached millions of consumers, retailers, manufacturers, and 

legislators about the transition. We created and operated the Web 

site, antennaweb.org, which we manage with NAB, and that helps 

consumers choose the right antenna for their location. We have digital tips which helps consumers learn about the transition. 

We have a video. We hired Florence Henderson of The Brady 

Bunch to get to the elder people, to reach out to them, and we have 

done a lot in the retailer training, consumer education area. And 

I think we have been successful. We started out in 2006, 41 percent 

of consumers were familiar. By the end of 2007, it was 80 percent. 

Today Neilson, who I think understates it, says that 96 percent of 


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all TV homes are now aware about the transition date and are prepared for it. If these conservative numbers even are correct, we will 

be about as close to 100 percent as you can be by June 12. 

This has been the most successful industry, government cooperative relationship probably since World War II. The first DTV hearing held by Chairman Markey focused on this appropriately, and 

the broadcasting cable, satellite, and public interest sectors worked 

together in the DTV Transition Coalition to ensure that we have 

been prepared to make the switch. It has been bipartisan cooperation, and I want to commend the FCC and the NTIA, both past and 

present, for the tremendous work in running these programs. And 

this committee for over 2 decades of oversight over this important 

transition. 

I remain convinced we are fully prepared for the successful and 

consumer-friendly transition. Why? First, recall that by February 

18 more than one-third of the broadcasters had fully transitioned 

to digital. Prior to that day some groups were claiming that this 

mini transition would leave millions without television. It would 

overwhelm the FCC’s call center and would cause tremendous 

harm to the most vulnerable among us who cannot be prepared in 

time. 

The predictions of these naysayers simply did not come true. Unfortunately, the mindset of groups that predicted massive failures 

on February 18 continues to dominant their outlook for June 12, 

and based on our newest information I believe that they are wrong 

again. 

To date roughly 26 million coupons have been redeemed, and we 

are projecting about some 4.2 million coupons will be redeemed 

from April until June, the June transition date. And through talking to retailers, major retailers and manufacturers, we believe inventory through the remainder of the transition will be robust and 

sufficient to cover projected demand over the next 3 months. 

But the marketplace is such that each retailer and each box supplier makes independent decisions, and this type of transition has 

absolutely no historical precedent. Digital-type TVs are selling well 

despite the recession. Last year almost 33 million sets were sold, 

and I am pleased to announce today that this year to date we are 

up 47 percent in DTV sales over the same period last year. And 

antenna cells are also selling well in recent months. 

To summarize our survey data suggest that manufacturers and 

retailers will likely meet consumer demand for converter boxes and 

antenna through the end of the transition, the June date. We will 

not know for sure whether this is the case until the Nation actually 

completes the DTV transition. This is as true today as it would 

have been if we had not delayed the date for February 17. The response to the significant recent changes made to the coupon program, manufacturers, and retailers have adjusted nimbly to ensure 

that market demands will be met. 

Now, as I have been saying for the last 15 years, this transition 

is historic. There will always be bumps in the road, but we have 

overcome every one of them, and they have all been frankly more 

significant than what we are facing now. There is no evidence at 

this point of large-scale dislocations that would justify a further 

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cause I am seeing—I will not elaborate on it because I saw your 

positive affirmation that there will not be a delay, so I won’t have 

to convince you why it is great to stay the course. 

So I thank you for your time, and I would be happy to answer 

any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shapiro follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Shapiro. 

Mr. Morrill. 

STATEMENT OF PETER MORRILL 

Mr. MORRILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Members 

Stearns and members of the committee, especially Mr. Dingell. It 

is an honor and a pleasure to be here and for the honor to be able 

to testify before you on behalf of Idaho Public Television and the 

Association of Public Television Stations. 

Now, I come to you from a State whose geography has always 

challenged the human spirit. In 1805, our Bitterroot Mountains 

nearly repelled the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Oregon Trail 

that crosses our southern desert has always been called the world’s 

longest cemetery due to the toll it took on pioneering families. 

Idaho public television, which reaches 97 percent of the State’s 

population, has worked for a decade to ensure that the digital transition gets a little friendlier reception. Since last July alone we 

have broadcast more than 52 hours of DTV consumer education announcements. Not programs, but announcements. Our efforts were 

bolstered in January by the $35,000 DTV Consumer Assistance 

Grant that we received from the FCC. We hired an additional fulltime engineer dedicated to responding to viewers’ technical inquiries and produced two programs and six informational spots discussing the transition, including the importance of antenna placement and VHF, UHF channel changes. 

Other public television station recipients of the FCC grant 

launched their own initiatives. For example, as noted by Representative Space, WOSU from Columbus, Ohio, teamed with local agencies for the elderly to train staff and volunteers to install converter 

boxes in homes and senior residences. 

Congress has specified $90 million of the stimulus funds be 

steered toward DTV consumer outreach. We are hopeful that much 

of that funding can be directed towards public television stations 

to build upon the success of the first wave of grants. Local public 

television stations have a unique combination of public trust, technical expertise, and unmatched local access that will enable us to 

provide necessary assistance. 

I urge the committee to focus on the last few steps between the 

antenna and the TV set, which is where consumers are going to 

need the most help between now and June 12. My experience has 

been that there is an over-arching need for in-home assistance for 

converter box scanning and antenna installation, particularly for 

the elderly. Other top priorities should be telephone and walk-in 

help centers staffed with well-trained personnel ready to help with 

location and station-specific issues. 

We also need to be realistic about the limits of consumer education. As Chairman Copps noted earlier, some viewers will not be 

able to receive all of the stations they did before the transition. In 

those cases full station disclosure is vital. 

For example, in Idaho some viewers within our service contour 

will lose coverage because, well, the digital signal doesn’t travel 

well through those darn mountains. In late December the FCC introduced options for stations to fill in these holes using translators, 

but because of the short timeframe and the desperate economic 


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conditions that exist right now, it will be extremely difficult to finance and deploy these systems. 

I respectfully request that this committee assist by supporting 

digital television fill-in service by granting stations at least 2 years 

to build out such systems and by making funding available immediately without a local match requirement. 

Finally, I must emphasize the need for increased federal funding 

for public television station operations to offset dramatic declines 

in revenue from non-federal sources of funding. Individual contributions, corporate underwriting, foundation and State support 

constitute 85 percent of our total operating revenue. Every day 

brings more news of station programming, personnel, and service 

cuts. Some stations are in a fight for survival. 

In Idaho we are projecting that the State will reduce our fiscal operating budget by nearly $300,000 from the previous year and 

will eliminate our $1.1 million request needed for capital equipment for our last major piece of the State-wide digital conversion. 

Think DTV fill-in translators here. 

Finally, public broadcasting provides important educational programming, especially for pre-school children. We are the most 

trusted source of news and information at a time when media are 

increasingly fragmented and newspapers are failing. We are virtually the only source remaining for cultural arts TV programming. 

We ask for the support of the members of this authorizing committee for increased federal funding so that public television may 

weather this economic typhoon and continue to provide innovative 

public media content and outreach to help all Americans do the 

same. 

Thank you very much for this opportunity, and I will look forward to answering any questions that you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Morrill follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Morrill. 

Mr. Lloyd, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MARK LLOYD 

Mr. LLOYD. Thank you very much. It is an honor to be here. 

Thank you very much and really appreciate the leadership of this 

committee and especially Chairman Emeritus Dingell for sort of 

following these issues so closely and vigorously over the years. 

My name is Mark Lloyd. I am the Vice President for Strategic 

Initiatives of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. LCCREF is a 

national social justice organization working to establish equal opportunity in America through education and public outreach. 

We have been working on informing the public about the digital 

television transition for about 2 years now, and this work includes 

participating in the DTV Steering Committee and on the DTV Coalition, presenting at national conferences, and thanks to a grant 

from NTIA working on the ground in seven markets since last December to assist vulnerable populations make the transition to digital television. These populations include the poor, ethnic minorities, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. 

We are working in Portland, in the Seattle, Tacoma market, in 

the San Francisco Bay area, San Antonio, Minneapolis, Atlanta, 

and yes, Mr. Dingell, Detroit. We are assisting with people, filing 

applications for the DTV converter boxes request, helping people 

identify and acquire the converter box most appropriate to their 

needs, working to help people set up the equipment in their homes 

to continue to receive over-the-air television service. 

We believe, as we think Congress intended, that all Americans 

should have access to free, over-the-air television service, and our 

work on the ground has confirmed that free, over-the-air service is 

a vital lifeline for many in our communities. 

We would like to thank Congress again for adjusting the DTV or 

the TV Translator Program and authorizing NTIA to distribute additional funds for our educational work, and it is this funding that 

makes our work possible in the seven cities. And we would like to 

thank you for extending the transition date to June 12 and providing additional funds to support the educational and outreach effort. 

We can assure you that many Americans in the communities 

that we were working in were frankly panicked, were panicked in 

December when they found out from NTIA that they had run out 

of funds and that they were establishing a waiting list for coupons. 

More time was clearly needed to prepare for this transition. We can 

also assure you that we have made very good use of taxpayer dollars in our outreach to vulnerable communities. 

In the seven markets that we have opened up over 16 DTV assistant centers established relations with a couple of dozen DTV 

partners and provided direct assistance for roughly 20,000 individuals in several different languages. In each of our cities we have 

established coupon exchange programs. Our DTV assistance centers and other partners help roughly 100 walk-ins and telephone 

callers every day. We have connected community groups to both 

mainstream public and commercial media, and our work with ethVerDate Mar 15 2010 08:55 Mar 02, 2012 Jkt 067820 PO 00000 Frm 00125 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A820.XXX A820

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nic media has allowed us to reach groups the ubiquitous TV PSAs 

did not reach. 

All of our assistance centers were inundated with calls on February 17 and the 2 days that followed. Many of the calls were 

about reception problems, but for the most part they reflected general confusion about whether the transition was happening or not. 

These calls petered out after the first few days, but the confusion 

frankly still continues. 

We are now providing daily news updates and reports to some 

70 people working on the ground on our front lines. We call news 

articles and reports about what is happening with the transition 

that we get from our contacts here on the Hill, at the FCC, at 

NTIA, at the White House, and with the DTV Transition Coalition. 

But we also provide a central hub for all of our different partners 

to learn and share with each other how best to reach these most 

vulnerable, hard-to-reach communities. 

One of the key problems, continuing problems is the reception. 

A converter box is simply not enough. Many of the calls that we 

get are folks who need new antennas. Sometimes they need powered antennas. We have found the FCC’s online map very useful 

in helping to identify potential signals at locations, but we have 

also found DTV reception to be inconsistent in the same community 

and in the same apartment building. 

Our local partners have been very careful to say we can provide 

general guidance, but we cannot predict what channels a viewer is 

going to be able to get. We believe that the work of identifying 

marginalized communities before the transition is vital. This is difficult work, but it is vital. 

We have also called Long Call for a rapid response plan to identify and serve those households which for one reason or another 

will fall through the cracks. We believe this work will continue well 

past the mid-June deadline. We would very much like to continue 

to assist in the effort to help these vulnerable communities keep 

free over-the-air television service, was happy to hear Anna Gomez 

announce that we were going to get funding, but frankly we are 

still in negotiation, and we are not quite sure what that means as 

of this point. 

I very much look forward to your questions. Again, thank you 

very much for your continued oversight and interest in these 

issues. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lloyd follows:] 


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Mr. WEINER [presiding]. Thank you for testifying, Mr. Lloyd. 

Mr. Prather, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT S. PRATHER, JR. 

Mr. PRATHER. Thank you, Mr. Weiner, Mr. Dingell. My name is 

Robert S. Prather, Jr. I am President of Gray Television, and I 

want to thank you for inviting us to speak here today. 

Gray Television is a public company listed on the New York 

Stock Exchange, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. We currently 

own 36 stations in 30 markets, TMAs 58 to 188. In addition, we 

are broadcasting 40 digital channels on our digital spectrum 

through the multi-cast. We have got 17 CBS, 10 NBC, 8 ABC, and 

1 lonely FOX. 

We are very proud of the fact that we have got 24 stations out 

of our group that are number one leaders in their markets, 16 have 

been number one for 50 straight years or more, which tells you we 

have got a long history of being a part of the fabric of these communities. We have one station in Huntington, Charleston, West 

Virginia, that is celebrating its 60th anniversary, and it has been 

number one every day since it has been on the air. So very proud 

of that. 

But as of February 17, 28 Gray stations transitioned to DTV. We 

believe our stations give a great case study of how preparation, 

community outreach, and willingness to go the extra mile can prepare viewers for DTV. One thing we said right up front was we 

want one viewer at a time, and we had every one of our managers 

committed to making sure we took care of every single viewer that 

called or came to the station, e-mailed, however they wanted to 

contact us. We made sure that they got taken care of. We spent over $60 million getting ready for digital television in 

both transition equipment and high definition equipment, and we 

spent heavily on education and production of education material for 

the consumer. Our approach can best be summed up by Brad 

Ramsey, our manager in Charlottesville, Virginia, who said, ‘‘We 

saw the education process as an opportunity, not a burden.’’ 

And in response to FCC Educational Initiative, we started company-wide coordinated consumer education program in March of 

2008. Our stations exceeded the commission’s call for education by 

consistently airing more public service announcements, informational calls, and 30-minute informational segments that the agency 

rules required. Our stations extended the consumer education by 

regularly including DTV transition in our newscast. In addition, 

many of our stations participated in market-wide voluntary soft 

tests that showed viewers what would happen if they were not prepared for the DTV transition. 

Earlier this year it was clear that there was a small percentage 

of television viewers that would not be ready on February 17. For 

broadcasters a delay could mean many forfeited dollars for tower 

crews and months of extra utility bills to keep two transmitters 

going. I think Congress wisely balanced the competing needs of unprepared viewers and broadcasters in the DTV Delay Act. 

Gravely, this station’s markets were ready on February 17. Furthermore, we believe the viewers would face the same type of difficulties whether transition occurred in February or in June. I perVerDate Mar 15 2010 08:55 Mar 02, 2012 Jkt 067820 PO 00000 Frm 00131 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A820.XXX A820

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sonally task all our general managers with assessing whether to 

proceed with the transition as scheduled or to delay. Our general 

managers were instructed to consider a number of factors, including market readiness, individual viewer feedback, schedules for 

tower and equipment work, and whether the station was moving 

to a different post-transition digital channel and transmitter utility 

costs. 

Twenty-two of our stations moved forward on the transition plan. 

Eight stations decided to stay with the analog. In fact, one of our 

eight stations, WHSV in Harrisonburg, Virginia, initially moved 

with the transition but then reassessed its decision 4 days later 

and requested authority from the commission to resume analog 

broadcasts. WHSV’s location in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia 

left it susceptible to a loss of service in several communities because the station’s digital signal was blocked by mountainous terrain. 

Although the majority of the viewers in the market were ready 

for the transition, our general manager made the decision to resume analog broadcast in order to use the additional time to seek 

alternative methods to serve these communities. Specifically, 

WHSV is working to acquire and convert TV translator stations to 

carry WHSV’s digital signal to those areas where they may experience a total loss of service. 

The number and complexity of viewer calls received on or immediately after each station’s transition varied significantly by market. Yet in all markets certain trends were clear. As expected, the 

volume of calls peaked on stations transition day, declined steadily 

every day thereafter. The majority of the issues could be resolved 

by providing instructions over the phone, and station employees 

went to extraordinary lengths to aid the handful of viewers who 

could not be helped by over-the-phone instructions. In many markets we had station employees that made house calls to assist 

viewers who had more complex problems. 

Over and over again Gray stations found that the calls fell in the 

same basic categories; improper installation of converter boxes, the 

need to rescan DTV sets or converter box in order to receive the 

stations on new digital channel, and antenna issues associated 

with stations that were moving from VHF to UHF channels or vice 

versa. In Gray’s experience questions on how to obtain a coupon or 

about the status of a coupon wait list represented a very small 

fraction of the calls and even fewer from individuals who were not 

aware of the digital transition. 

For Gray the digital transition has been a positive experience. 

The majority of Gray’s viewers are ready for DTV, but the viewers 

who were not fully ready, the majority of their specific concerns 

could not have been identified or resolved until a core group of stations completed the transition. 

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the subcommittee 

and look forward to any questions you might have. Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prather follows:] 


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Mr. WEINER. Well, thank you very much. I yield myself 5 minutes. 

Mr. Prather, in some degrees you were the canary in the 

coalmine on a couple of issues. Right? 

Mr. PRATHER. Yes. 

Mr. WEINER. You have the transition, you even had one that 

transitioned back. 

Mr. PRATHER. Yes. 

Mr. WEINER. Is June going to be sufficient time for that station 

that transitioned to move the mountains and to—I mean, I see that 

there are structural problems that you face. Mr. Morrill referred to 

them as well. 

Mr. PRATHER. That is a good question. I think the real issue in 

our particular case is they could get an analog signal in these 

mountains, but we are on channel three, which allows—is a better 

coverage in mountainous terrain. They could not get it on our digital channel, and we are working with the, actually with the county 

and the State, it is part West Virginia, part Virginia, to set up 

some translators, which we think we can get done by June where 

those people can still—they are not even in our market area, but 

they have been used to getting our signal for a long time, they like 

our local news. We are really the dominant broadcaster in that part 

of the country, and so we want to serve those people. So I think 

we will be able to, and you know, our manager made the decision 

to move back because she felt it was important to do the right 

thing in the community. 

Mr. WEINER. Well, as I referred in the question to the panel and 

Mr. Copps referred to it as well, that this, you know, weird way, 

the glitch here and the delay has given opportunity for some testing that wasn’t contemplated by the original law. 

Mr. PRATHER. I think that is true, and I think, you know, people 

can learn from both the good things that happened with us and, 

you know, some of the things, questions. I think the biggest question that came up for us was antenna issues, which frankly we 

didn’t anticipate it. We thought it would be more box issues 

but—— 

Mr. WEINER. Well, I have to tell you. Despite Mr. Shapiro’s ammunition that we shouldn’t have delayed it and we shouldn’t delay 

it any further, there is—you are going to be getting a lot of people 

walking into your retailer saying, hey, what have you got for a 

mountain obstacle, or what have you got, I mean, I think that we 

have to be prepared for. 

Mr. Lloyd, we have got about 15 percent of the population went 

through a transition of some sort, but it seems to me just sort of 

glancing at the list, they are not communities that have disproportionate numbers of English as second language, not a large number 

of communities that have high levels of need, not the type of communities that you were tasked with reaching out to. 

All that being said, were there some lessons in those little pockets that you have now taken and said, oh, we are in for a mess, 

or that this isn’t going to be so bad? Did you learn anything from 

that 15 percent population? 

Mr. LLOYD. Well, mainly what we have learned is the real importance of high touch, direct assistance for some of these populations, 


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and that I think it is very easy for those of us who are relatively 

comfortable and sophisticated not to understand the confusion that 

is created with this transition. Even with people who have boxes, 

the idea that you need to rescan the box can be very confusing, and 

we have gone into homes with senior citizens, people who really 

view television as a lifeline service. And really they have been in 

tears at the confusion, thinking that they were going to be able to, 

they were going to lose television service. 

So part of what we have learned is the real importance of being 

able to go in the homes, of being able to communicate directly in 

language, in Mong, in Vietnamese, and obviously Spanish and a 

wide variety of languages, that this is not going to be handled easily by a PSA campaign or something that is just going to reach the 

general population. These are tough populations to reach. 

Mr. WEINER. You also have a cultural sense among many senior 

citizens that the television is essentially a piece of furniture, and 

it turns a switch, something goes on, and I think that one of the 

experiences that is going to be toughest is that the way we are 

taught to think about television, we are not used to the idea that 

bad reception means no reception. So that is a cultural thing that 

we need to, I imagine that we need to overcome as well. 

Mr. LLOYD. Well, that is right. I mean, the other thing just very 

quickly is that a number of folks that we have talked to had cable 

service. They want over-the-air service. They don’t think they can 

continue to actually afford to continue cable service. And so I think 

some of the concern about over-the-air television and the need for 

over-the-air television needs to be more fully understood. 

Mr. WEINER. Uh-huh. Mr. Morrill, just, I am curious not because 

I represent a community like Idaho, but what—have you found 

that the fixes that you needed to do to deal with the mountainous 

terrain, have you, I mean, have you found that the technological 

fixes that your colleague is trying to explain how they work by and 

large? 

Mr. MORRILL. Well, Mr. Chairman, I do want to point out that 

first of all the vast majority of our viewers that view over-the-air 

digital TV in Idaho are in great shape. We have got some great 

mountaintop transmitter locations that provide outstanding coverage, but we do have some persistent pockets, primarily in mountainous communities, that do need immediate attention by my organization, and I hope the Federal Government. These digital fillin areas are going to be well served by the new guidelines set forth 

by the FCC. 

We are hopeful that those guidelines will be updated so that local 

stations will actually be able to get them on the air in a timely 

basis, but it all comes down to, sir, funding. In this economic crisis 

especially now I am doubtful that given the current guidelines and 

funding that we aren’t going to be able to get them on unless we 

have your assistance. 

Mr. WEINER. The gentleman from Illinois recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to try to go 

quickly. 


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Mr. Wood, how much has Univision paid in essence advertising 

in public, you know, announcements to prepare for the transition, 

the original one and edition two? 

Mr. WOOD. You know, I can’t give you a figure. It is a substantial 

amount, 100,000 PSAs, 30-second spots running in prime time and 

throughout the day is probably a fairly substantial value. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. We are talking lots of money. Right? 

Mr. WOOD. Lots of money. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And we want to thank you for that, because prior 

what we focused on, and we knew that the industry would step up 

to the plate, and they have done much, multiple more than what 

the government could do, and I would argue a better job of doing 

that. 

Mr. Severson, there was some opening statements, talk that 

mentioned the fact that we will run out of digital receivers. Do you 

believe that? That there won’t be enough. 

Mr. SEVERSON. There won’t be enough converter boxes? 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Yes. Converter boxes for people to buy. You probably have, Wal-Mart probably got enough for—— 

Mr. SEVERSON. I don’t know that anyone has established what 

the right number is yet. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Right. 

Mr. SEVERSON. And so that is a challenge for us to all figure out. 

As we react, the one thing we do, we greatly appreciate the information that the NTIA feeds us on a constant basis in terms of 

where those coupons are going, how—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Well, I bought my two from Wal-Mart. 

Mr. SEVERSON. Thank you. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I want you to know. I got my coupons, I did it 

early, I listened to the great advertisements, and I have got my antennas, and they work. So let me—— 

Mr. SEVERSON. We appreciate your business. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Yes. Let me—Mr. Shapiro, in the debate on the 

floor when we, I think foolishly, delayed this, and I shouldn’t mention this because he is not here, but Mr. Boucher promised me on 

the floor that we would not delay it any further. So I know that 

is your concern. I will, as he knows, will remind him of those statements that—oh, and there he is. Perfect timing, walking in the 

door. 

Mr. Boucher, I was just saying how on the debate on the floor 

you were pretty strong about committing not to delay this any— 

you would do all in your power not to delay this anymore. So I was 

just relating that story and in hopes that that will be your continued position. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I would be honored to yield. 

Mr. BOUCHER. You have an excellent memory. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And without notes from my staff. That is even better. 

The—I want to ask for unanimous consent for a statement submitted by Qualcomm to be submitted in the record, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Without objection. 

[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] 


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Mr. SHIMKUS. And it just points out, and Mr. Dingell is here, and 

I have heard him numerous times talk about the takings provisions 

of the Constitution. And one the reasons I had real problems with 

this legislation is because of the spectrum auction, a promise of a 

good, paid for, and then was taken away, because of the delay, the 

full use of the 700 megahertz spectrum was not used as initially 

negotiated, and I think the letter highlights that there was some 

harm done by pushing this back, and that is what the letter actually highlights. 

This question is for the entire panel. We originally wanted to 

provide coupons just to exclusively over-the-air homes, the ones 

that were actually at risk for losing service. We made paid television households eligible at the insistence of my friends on the 

other side, and about half the money ended up being spent on 

those homes. 

In hindsight should we have stuck to our guns and focused only 

on over-the-air homes? Should we do so now to make sure we don’t 

have to delay again? 

Mr. Wood. 

Mr. WOOD. That is hard for me to answer. I think that is—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. We love putting people in hard-to-answer questions. 

Mr. WOOD. You know—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. That is part of our job here. 

Mr. WOOD [continuing]. I will tell you that a substantial proportion of our audience is over-the-air, that a greater proportion of our 

audience than households at large are over-the-air households, that 

that has been an obstacle for Hispanic households in the transition, 

but as to who the coupons go to, which houses, I think that is a 

policy matter. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. That is fine. Mr. Severson. 

Mr. SEVERSON. I feel very similarly that we are here to take care 

of the customers, and in this case you have helped determine who 

those customers are. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. OK. Mr. Shapiro. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I know Chairman Boucher is concerned about, as 

we all are, about the number of boxes that will be left in those final 

days, and that is a very difficult decision for retailers to make an 

investment in a product which has a very limited life. It is kind 

of like food that spoils. And manufacturers also making that manufacturing investments decision. 

So we have done a lot of work to try to research as to what that 

number will be, and we came up with an estimate that we think 

is good, and we think there is enough boxes out there. 

But as we have suggested before, if it comes right down to it, if 

it comes down to the end and there are not enough boxes available 

or there is not enough funding in the program or whatever it is, 

there are other alternatives that I think policymakers should consider. One is to have those coupons available and to be used for 

basic cable service or for satellite or for an upper-end box or even 

for a stripped down TV set. 

In terms of allocating them, obviously if it comes down to the end 

and there is just not enough money in the program or not enough 


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boxes, that would be a logical triage for policymakers to face, but 

I am sure the NTIA people will be looking to you for guidance. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Morrill. 

Mr. MORRILL. I think in the perfect world, and we don’t live in 

a perfect world, yes, everyone should get a coupon, but clearly it 

makes sense in a world where we don’t have unlimited resources 

that putting a priority on those homes that are exclusively overthe-air kind of makes sense. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Lloyd. 

Mr. LLOYD. Yes. I think it makes sense to put a priority on overthe-air households, but I would say I don’t think over-the-air 

households and free and pay TV are fixed numbers. There are people who have pay TV who want to be over-the-air, and if they are 

locked in and you don’t have the opportunity to get to them, they 

are not going to make the switch. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And Mr. Prather. 

Mr. PRATHER. You know, first of all, I think everybody in this 

room would agree that digital television is a superior product to 

what analog is, so I think everybody in America is going to be getting a better product, and I definitely think over-the-air ought to 

be a priority. I think if you can afford cable, you can afford to, you 

know, if you need to buy a box for one TV that is not hooked up 

to it, but I am a big believer that television is very important to 

everybody in America. Virtually 100 percent of the people have 

them, and as I said, we are providing a superior product, much better than anybody has ever had in the history of television. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will 

just end by saying I am excited about the transition. I think the 

public needs competitive choices, and because of the things you just 

mentioned, Mr. Prather, now they really do. I have had people 

leave cable. I hate to say that to some of my friends, to go overthe-air. They no longer have that additional cost, and they have 

quality and a lot more channels than they had before. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Shimkus. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Dingell, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

This question is to Mr. Shapiro. It was reported last year you accused Congressional Democrats of fear-mongering, and I quote 

there, ‘‘when we expressed concerns about whether this program 

was going to work and consumers were going to be properly treated.’’ Did you ever make that comment? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I am happy to say that we contacted that reporter 

and asked where they got that from. I was accusing the fear monger, of fear-mongering, which were actually individuals in the private sector, specifically probably the consumers’ union. 

Mr. DINGELL. So you never said it? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I definitely used the word, fear-mongering, but I 

wasn’t referring to elected officials. I was referring to self-declared 

consumer representatives. 

Mr. DINGELL. OK. All right. That comforts me. 

Starting with Mr. Wood, and we will go across the panel here because I would like to hear all of your judgments and thoughts on 


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this matter. What is, and you got to do this in about 25 words or 

less because we don’t have much time, but what is the biggest single problem that has to be addressed here? And what is the way 

of getting the greatest benefit to the consumers to be achieved by 

this committee, the Congress, and the regulatory agencies? 

Mr. WOOD. I think for the community we serve the Hispanic 

households in America. I think they started out behind. I think a 

greater percent are over-the-air television viewers. They had further to go, fewer of them were connected to start with. 

So as of today we see on March 15 Neilson estimated that 6.1 

percent of Hispanic households are not prepared, are not hooked 

up, which is 2.5 percent greater than the households as a whole in 

the United States. 

Mr. DINGELL. What can we do about this? 

Mr. WOOD. The good news is that it is coming down. As of the 

original transition date the number then was—— 

Mr. DINGELL. What do we do about this? 

Mr. WOOD. What we are going to do is we are going to continue 

to reach out and continue to bring down the number. We are going 

to introduce new phases of our campaign where we address the 

feedback we have gotten, Mr. Chairman. For example—— 

Mr. DINGELL. Do you have any advice to the committee as to 

what we should see is done about this? 

Mr. WOOD. Well, what we are going to focus on is antennas, the 

need to scan, exactly the things that Chairman Copps mentioned 

in the first panel. I think that the items that they have identified 

are the correct items. It is the same feedback we have gotten. 

Mr. DINGELL. I got to go to the next panel member. Mr. 

Severson. 

Mr. SEVERSON. Thank you. The biggest concern I have, the biggest challenges that we have got to stop changing things. The customer is confused, and so we just need to stick to our guns, stick 

to the date, and start re-communicating things—— 

Mr. DINGELL. What can be done about that? 

Mr. SEVERSON. I am sorry? 

Mr. DINGELL. What is to be done about that? 

Mr. SEVERSON. What is to be done? To make sure that we communicate on an ongoing basis that June 12 is the date, and that 

the customers understand that. 

Mr. DINGELL. That is regulatory agencies, the FCC and the 

NTIA. What are they to do about that? 

Mr. SEVERSON. I think that the role that they are playing with 

us in terms of feeding us good information is exactly what we need 

because that allows us to determine future demand. 

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you, sir. Mr. Shapiro. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I can’t think of a more successful public education 

effort than the one of the industry and government has worked on 

together for this one. I suspect that more people know about this 

transition than can name the present Vice President of the United 

States or the previous Vice President of the United States. It has 

succeeded. The challenge is one change is almost a bye, and it is 

very confusing. Our experience of the consumers is—and we have 

asked a lot. We have done research for years and years on this. 

Their awareness is very high, but now they are a little confused 


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about the date because February has passed, and analog is still 

there for some of them. 

So not change—— 

Mr. DINGELL. What would the regulatory agencies—— 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, I would say Congress should do no harm and 

not changing it. The regulatory agencies are doing a great job, finish out the program, declare victory, and move on. A year from now 

we will look back at this and the rest of the world will look back 

and say the U.S. had the most successful transition in history. We 

will be the example for the world. Europe and Japan both screwed 

this up and had to start over. 

Mr. DINGELL. I have to go to other members of the panel. Mr. 

Morrill. 

Mr. MORRILL. Well, there have actually been some pretty good 

ideas coming down the line here. I would have to say the number 

one thing is continued investment in consumer education. That 

would be my number one, and of course, I can’t give up on this fillin translator issue also. Investment in that so that people that 

have had high quality over-the-air service will continue to get it 

after the transition. 

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Lloyd. 

Mr. LLOYD. Chairman Dingell, I would just say it is extraordinarily important for this committee to continue the close oversight of what the agencies do and to ask directly whether or not 

they are making sure they are funding people who are on the 

ground to get to those hard-to-reach, vulnerable communities that 

the PSAs didn’t get to. And, again, making sure that there are people on the ground who are hearing from people and that they are 

getting the assistance that they need to get the service. 

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you. Mr. Prather. 

Mr. PRATHER. Mr. Dingell, I think the FCC, and I think they 

have done a relatively good job of this, should take the same attitude that we took of one viewer at a time and just, you know, have 

phone banks and make sure they have got people that are trained 

and educated to answer these questions. We found out that we had 

out of 28 stations we had roughly less than 10,000 phone calls. We 

answered every single one of them, and we spent from a minute 

to 45 minutes with people, going through what they need to do. I 

would say 80 or 90 percent of the questions were related to how 

do I turn this converter box on or how do I scan it. Probably the 

second was regarding the antenna issues, going from VHF, UHF, 

those things. 

But I don’t think we left a single person feeling like they hadn’t 

gotten service, and like I said, we even went to peoples’ homes that 

were really, knew they had a problem or it was some issue that we 

couldn’t solve over the phone. And I know the FCC can’t go to peoples’ homes, but I think the phone banks and just the education of 

the people they got answering the calls around the country can do 

the same thing that we have done. 

And I think most stations that are community oriented like we 

are will also take that same approach, because our viewers are our 

most important asset. 

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I have a unanimous 

consent request before I yield the floor. I am going to send a letter 


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down to the NTIA and the FCC requesting certain information. I 

would ask unanimous consent that that letter be inserted in the 

record and that the record be kept open to receive the responses 

of the FCC and the NTIA. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Without objection and the record will remain open 

for public members to submit questions to our panel of witnesses 

and for those responses to be received. 

Anything further, Mr. Dingell? 

The question that I want to focus on relates to the level of assurance we have that we will have a sufficient number of converter 

boxes available as we approach June the 12th. 

But before I turn to that question, let me say for what probably 

now is the at least tenth time, that there shall be no further postponement of the DTV transition. And no requests for further postponements will be entertained by this subcommittee. Chairman 

Waxman has been equally demonstrative in expressing the same 

viewpoint from his vantage point as full committee chairman. So 

rest assured that there shall be no further postponement. 

Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Severson, my questions are going to be primarily directed to the two of you, but other panel members are welcome to comment as you desire. 

I am concerned about whether or not we are going to have adequate converter boxes available, and I am just looking at a series 

of numbers that don’t seem to match. As of yesterday in the report 

that we got from NTIA there were almost 9.3 million coupons that 

had been issued but not redeemed. These are active coupons in circulation. 

The current conversion rate, the redemption rate that we have 

for coupons redeemed for converter boxes is right at 60 percent, 

and assuming that that rate is experienced from now until June, 

we could certainly anticipate that as many as 5.5 million boxes 

would be necessary just to meet the 60 percent conversion rate the 

than 9.2 million coupons currently outstanding. 

And that number doesn’t take into account the fact that as of 

yesterday NTIA was getting more than 100,000 new requests for 

coupons every day. In fact, yesterday’s number was 140,000, and 

we have seen the numbers continue to climb just over the course 

of the last week. It went from 91,000 on Tuesday to 140,000 yesterday, and we have seen an upward curve, a consistent upward curve 

over the last month. That may continue, and obviously many of 

those coupons, let us assume 60 percent, are going to be redeemed 

for converter boxes. 

Also unaccounted for in these numbers are the converter boxes 

that people simply buy with their own money and don’t use coupons in order to purchase. I heard one witness earlier today suggest, I believe Mr. Severson, it might have been you, that about 90 

or 95 percent of your converter boxes are coupon supported, but 

you have got some significant number, 5 to 10 percent, that are 

not. So that is even more. 

And so, Mr. Shapiro, I am a little concerned about your estimate 

of only 4.2 million total boxes being needed from April until June 

the 12th. That doesn’t seem to square with these numbers. And 

rather than just quarrel about those numbers, let me ask what perhaps is a better question, you can respond to all of this at once, 


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to what extent is there close coordination from NTIA to the retailers to the manufacturers of information about coupon requests, 

coupon redemptions, so that some realistic projections can actually 

be made by the manufacturers based upon good estimates of what 

future demands will be? 

And if the answer to that question is right, then your 4.2 million 

figure gives me less concern. I mean, if there really is good flow of 

information, and we can have some confidence that manufacturers 

really are going to respond very quickly, and I think you used the 

word, nimbly, before in order to meet whatever the demand really 

is. 

So it is a long question. This is what concerns me the most about 

the transition from this point forward. So Mr. Severson, Mr. Shapiro, whoever wants to begin. 

Mr. SEVERSON. I will answer from a Wal-Mart perspective and 

then Mr. Shapiro can answer from an industry perspective. 

As I stated before, the information that we get on a weekly basis 

from the NTIA is invaluable. We get information in terms of totals 

but also by zip code so that we can break those down, look at the 

redemption rate, look at our market share of that product. That allows us to not only understand where we should be sending product, because it has to be distributed throughout the United States, 

but also allows us to understand the trend of the coupons and the 

redemption rates and things like that. 

We are—so we analyze that data on a weekly basis by store. 

Over 4,500—our systems allow us to look at that and make those 

determinations and determine do we have enough product coming. 

Rest assured there is always product in the pipeline, and then 

when do we need to go out and order more product to be able to 

manufacture and have product on hand for the month and a half 

to 2 months from now that we are going to need that product. 

Mr. BOUCHER. And how nimbly do these manufacturers respond 

to your information suggesting that you are going to have an increased demand? 

Mr. SEVERSON. Sure. So we work with two suppliers specifically 

that we partnered with a year and a half ago to determine these 

are folks that we do a lot of business with, they are ones that are 

going to work very closely with us, they are in it for the long haul, 

not just for a transactional basis. They are going to make sure that 

they build a quality product and be able to deliver it on time. 

So we feel fairly confident as we work with them on an ongoing 

basis to talk about the supply and also the parts that are needed 

and the timing. We are in the business of taking care of our customers. That is what we do, and so we are reacting to our customer 

and how they are looking to be served on this so that we can take 

care of them. 

Mr. BOUCHER. And the manufacturers are responding appropriately as you tell them you need new boxes? 

Mr. SEVERSON. We are their customer, and they are responding 

to us. So, yes. 

Mr. BOUCHER. So the answer is yes? 

Mr. SEVERSON. Yes. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Are you worried? Are you worried that there will 

not be enough boxes to meet the demand? 


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Mr. SEVERSON. No. My biggest concern is that I will end up with 

too many boxes at the end, and the demand goes away, and then 

I have got nothing to do with—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, you obviously have to, you know, account for 

inventory and be sure that—— 

Mr. SEVERSON. Absolutely. 

Mr. BOUCHER [continuing]. You don’t oversupply. 

Mr. SEVERSON. Sure. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Shapiro, where did you get your 4.2 million 

number, and are you persuaded based on what you have heard 

today that maybe a higher number will be required? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The flow of information from NTIA is very good. I 

am persuaded that the number will change along the way, it will 

go up or down. What we did is we have talked to—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, just based on their currently outstanding 

coupons and current redemption rate. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, I am not aware of the last few days but—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. I am sorry. What? 

Mr. SHAPIRO [continuing]. We use a 65 percent rate rather than 

the 60 percent rate—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. That is even higher. 

Mr. SHAPIRO [continuing]. In terms of redemption. You might 

have gone a little further out in time than we did, so maybe that 

balances out, and you also have more recent data than we were 

using. But what we did is we went out to major manufacturers, 

major retailers, and they are very cooperative with us for the most 

part. We don’t get everybody, but we get most of them on both 

sides. And we know that at least four manufacturers are still making these boxes today. And they are responding to people like Mr. 

Severson next to me immediately, and they are monitoring this. 

So it is a marketplace, and you know, we are very mindful of the 

Anti-Trust Laws. We have considered going out with direct questions perhaps with your signature or someone else’s like you would 

be very helpful in terms of trying to gather actual data for what 

they are planning if you are that concerned in terms of getting the 

precise number. But it is the balance that every store is facing the 

same one. Do you order too much or do you order too little? They 

hate to say, you know, send a customer elsewhere, but they don’t 

want to get stuck with inventory which has no value. 

We are already starting to see scores of these things on eBay and 

Amazon at under the $40 coupon value. Now, there is a secondary 

market developing. You know, the flea market is a wonderful thing. 

So in terms of where we end up, the number is starting to change, 

but that is a good thing, and we expect there will be spot shortages, which—and there may even be occasionally a minor locality 

or geographic shortage, but sophisticated retailers are always moving around and respond to a situation. 

Mr. BOUCHER. My concern about your number is that the manufacturers may look to you being here, being close to the situation, 

following it through your trade association every day, talking to 

NTIA on a regular basis, for advice as to the number of boxes they 

ought to manufacture. And if 4.2 million becomes the benchmark, 

we are going to fall short. We will fall short even based on the outVerDate Mar 15 2010 08:55 Mar 02, 2012 Jkt 067820 PO 00000 Frm 00156 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A820.XXX A820

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standing coupons that exist today, much less the ones that are 

going to be requested in the future. 

And so I am concerned about that. I welcome your suggestion 

that perhaps there is a role we can play through making appropriate inquiries to manufacturers and or retailers. Perhaps in the 

course of our letters asking questions containing the projections 

that we see just based on the numbers presented and suggesting 

that higher number of boxes may be necessary. 

And if you would care to interact with us informally afterwards 

and make more concrete suggestions about what might be constructive in that respect, we would welcome it. 

But I hope that as your manufacturers are talking with you that 

you are giving them some very clear guidance about this and sharing NTIA’s current numbers so that they actually have the benefit 

of that also. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. You know, there is one thing that concerns an association. It is the Anti-Trust Laws, and we don’t give guidance. 

We try to communicate the facts. 

Mr. BOUCHER. You can share information. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. We will be happy to share information consistent with the law. The $140,000, the 140,000 unit a day request for coupons, if that continues, the numbers will go up rapidly, but the normalized rate that we were using was 70,000 coupons a day. 

Mr. BOUCHER. It is higher today. 

Mr. Prather. 

Mr. PRATHER. Chairman, I will maybe try to relieve your mind 

a little bit. I know—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. I would appreciate that. 

Mr. PRATHER [continuing]. We haven’t gotten into the big cities 

yet, but in our markets, which is DMA 58 to 188, to give you an 

example in Omaha, market 75, we had a little over 600 calls. We 

had 33 calls asking about coupons. In Lincoln, which is market 

101, we had 1,016 calls. We had two calls asking about coupons. 

And Augusta, Georgia, which has a heavy minority of black, Spanish, and Chinese, we had 3,000 calls there, but it was 90 percent 

related to how do I turn the box on? I mean, literally, you know, 

and how do I scan it. We had less than 50 calls there about coupons. 

So in our markets, and I am saying I am not speaking for New 

York City and Chicago and Detroit and all these other places, but 

it didn’t seem to be very much of an issue at all in our markets—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, thank you. 

Mr. PRATHER [continuing]. If they didn’t have a coupon and 

couldn’t get it, you think they would have been calling—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, thank you for that, Mr. Prather. That is not 

the problem I am really addressing. It is not the situation about 

box availability today, which is adequate. It is the situation about 

box availability in May when we may find that we have a shortage. 

And we are not going to postpone this transition again, so we need 

to get it right and—— 

Mr. PRATHER. Yes. 

Mr. BOUCHER [continuing]. This is why we are having the hearing today to figure out what needs to be done to make sure we 

don’t have future problems. 


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Anyone else want to comment on this? Mr. Shapiro. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Could I just say, Mr. Boucher, I don’t know if you 

were in the room when I suggested this earlier but the back-up 

plan that I would suggest is if there not enough boxes available, 

then the government in a big sense be ready to declare such and 

allow those coupons to be used for converter boxes which are not 

eligible, higher end, cable service, satellite, or even lower-end 

HDTVs as a back up. 

But the danger in even talking about that is then you will have 

all these people who want coupons on the basis that maybe that 

will occur. So it is a little bit of a catch 22, but that is the safety 

valve that is possible. 

Mr. BOUCHER. To be taken under advisement. I had sketched out 

a question here about what is being done in order to help people 

who are having problems with antennas once they install their converter boxes, and I suspect everyone here who is on the front line 

of offering assistance is experiencing requests for that. 

But I think you have answered those questions in response to 

questions posed by other members. And it is also been quite a long 

day, and you have been most patient and staying with us through 

a long break while we had votes on the floor. 

So I want to say thank you. This has been an extraordinarily 

helpful session today. Both panels have been superb in their testimony and have enlightened us, and we probably will be sending 

some additional questions to you as other members of the subcommittee submit their questions. When those arrive, please respond as quickly as you can. 

So with thanks to both panels of witnesses, oh, and I am supposed to put this in the record. Mr. Shimkus, he is gone. Well, I 

can, I am the only one who gets to object, and I don’t intend to. 

Well, so, unanimous consent is granted to place in the record the 

statement of Mr. Bill Stone, Senior Vice President of Qualcomm regarding the digital television transition. Also the statement of the 

Community Broadcasters’ Association. 

[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] 

Mr. BOUCHER. All right. No one is objecting. So without objection. 

And thank you so much for your presentations today. With that 

the hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:00 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:] 


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