Messy DTV transition will conclude Friday

The final episode of the Great 2009 DTV Conversion occurs at midnight Friday, when the final three over-the-air TV stations in Spokane go to all-digital broadcast.

KREM, KSKN and KGPX will shut off their analog signals at 11:59 p.m. Friday.

All other Spokane over-the-air stations made the switch to digital signals in February. Nationwide, 42 percent of all stations made the change at that time.

The change has been engineered for more than two years and finally concludes a confusing transition for about 15 percent of homes in the Spokane and North Idaho area. Those were the TV-watchers who have relied on rabbit-ear antennas for their programs. Cable or satellite customers already receive digital programming.

KGPX, which is channel 34 on UHF antennas and on cable, is the only one of the three stations doing a “flash-cut” – adding a digital signal while shutting off its analog signal.

Both KREM and its UHF sister station KSKN will simply shut off their analog signals; they’ve broadcast digitally for a number of years, said KREM Director of Technology John Souza.

After the switch, KREM will be at Channel 2.1 and KSKN at 22.1, said Souza.

Since February, engineers at KREM and KSKN have been able to see how viewers dealt with reception and other issues at the stations that switched earlier, said Souza.

People who still need coupons for a digital TV converter should contact an FCC hot line that will be staffed 24 hours a day over the weekend, said FCC spokesman Sherille Ismail, based in Washington, D.C. That hot line number, (888) CALL-FCC, can also be used for any other DTV-related problem, Ismail said.

Souza noted that viewers in outlying areas that rely on rural translators will not get digital signals despite the switch Friday night. Those translators still transmit TV in analog form; rural viewers can continue watching over rabbit-ear antennas, or disable the digital signal receiver on their converter box.