Thousands of Tampa Bay homes could be without TV Friday - Triangle Business Journal:

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percent of households in the Tampsa Bay area willgo dark. Although that represents more than 28,000o households in the region, it’s still well ahead of the national averageof 2.5 percent. That means 2.8 millionb households could be without television signal by the weekenr unless they purchase digitaltelevisiojn sets, connect to cable or satellite, or purchase a converter box, according to The digital transitio n was supposed to happen in February, but federak officials delayed that move for three months after millions of homes would lose During those three months the number of homez completely unready for the transition was cut in half from 5.
8 “Given the importance that television plays in the day-to-day life of most we expect that most of the remainintg unready homes will take the necessary steps to get ready once the stations make the finakl switch to digital transmission,” said Sara Erichson, presiden t of media client servicezs for Nielsen, in a release. Congress created the digital switch in 2005 as a way to free up analoyg spectrum for cellular phone companiez and others that could use signal that has been in use by televisiojn stationsfor decades.
Nielsen based its data on its Nationap People Meter panel as well as local metered The Tampa-Sarasota television market also cut its numbere of unready homes in half from 3.28 percent in Februarh to 1.55 percent in June. much of that drop happened through In Florida, the Fort Myers-Naples market has the best percentagse of prepared households with less than 1 percenf completely unready for the digital transition, representintg fewer than 5,000 homes. The Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne marke has 1.45 percent of its households completelgy unready, representing more than 21,200 The biggest problem area statewide remainsin Miami-For Lauderdale where 2.
81 percent, or 43,46i8 homes, are completely unready for the digital transition on Nationwide, Albuquerque-Santa Fe has the worst percentage of unready households at 7.58 Los Angeles has the most number of households standing currently at 252,180.