Digital TV Call Centers Swamped with Phone Calls

Welcome to the Digital Age.  Analog television is gone.

On Friday, June 12, 2009, U.S. broadcast television switched over from analog to digital signals. Analog televisions using an antenna now require a digital converter box to receive broadcast TV.

Were Americans ready for the big switch?  Most were, but many were not.

The FCC said on its website that Friday’s changeover to digital television prompted hundreds of thousands of calls for assistance “but caused no widespread disruption of free, over-the-air television broadcasts.”

It said 317,450 calls had been taken on Friday alone by the 1-888-CALL-FCC help line.

“Of the calls handled by live FCC help-line agents, nearly 30 percent concerned the operation of digital converter boxes,” the FCC said. “Most of those calls were resolved when consumers were instructed to ‘re-scan’ their converter boxes in order to receive the digital channels that had moved to new frequencies.”

According to Nielsen, which measures TV ratings, more than 6.5 million U.S. households weren’t prepared for the transition as of January 22 and therefore would be unable to get any television programming. Fortunately, that figure had been cut in half by Friday.

Still, that left over 3 million households unprepared.

With 4,000 agents taking phone calls, average wait time on the help line was about 4.5 minutes and 1.8 minutes for Spanish-speaking calls. An average agent spent around 8.4 minutes per call.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXh4EuJa2TU

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