The Digital Switch: Albuquerque swears it’s ready

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If you find yourself in the Albuquerque area this Friday and want to watch some television, you might be out of luck.

That’s because New Mexico’s Albuquerque-Santa Fe market -- the nation’s 44th in size -- is apparently asleep at the switch, according to Nielsen Media research, which says 7.6% of the homes in that region are ‘completely unready’ for Friday’s conversion from analog to digital television. Nationally, only 2.5% of the nation’s homes are ‘completely unready.’ Nielsen defines a completely unready home as one with no TV sets ready for the switch. ‘Partially ready’ homes have at least one ready TV and one unready TV.

We lobbed in a call to Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez’s office and talked with his spokeswoman Deborah James, who assured us, ‘Albuquerque is ready.’ She attributed the high percentage of ‘completely unready’ homes to outlying rural areas. She also forwarded us an e-mail from Sean Anker, the engineer at KOB-TV, the local NBC affiliate. The e-mail says that Nielsen is off base in its estimates (Nielsen wrong? Is that possible?). In other words, when Friday rolls around, there will be very few angry calls from people wondering where ‘Live with Regis and Kelly’ went. Nielsen stands by its numbers.

So if Albuquerque is the worst place to be come Friday to watch digital television, what’s the best place? That would be the Providence, R.I.-New Bedford, Mass., market, where every single home apparently is ready. Way to go, Providence!

As for us, we’re not much better than Albuquerque. Nielsen says 4.46% of Los Angeles homes are, wait for it, completely unready. Come on, Angelenos, let’s pick it up!

Overall, Nielsen says, African Americans (5.1% of those surveyed) and Hispanics (4.3%) are disproportionately unprepared for the switch. People under the age of 35 (4.6%) are also more ‘completely unprepared’ than the national average, but aren’t they already watching all the TV via the Internet anyway?

-- Joe Flint