by KYW's John Ostapkovich
Television viewers in the Philadelphia area seem to be having more trouble than most with the digital transition.
The FCC puts Philadelphia as the metro area with the fourth highest number of requests for help with the transition through its 1-888-CALL-FCC call center.
In all nearly 800,000 calls were received by the federal hot line from people confused about the nationwide move last Friday to drop analog TV signals and to broadcast only in digital (see related story).
The Federal Communications Commission says about 317,450 calls went into the help line on Friday alone, the day analog signals were cut off. Another 102,000 came in Saturday by 6pm Eastern time.
The largest volume of calls to the FCC on Friday came from the Chicago area, followed by Dallas-Ft. Worth, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
Philadelphia area FCC spokesman David Dombrowski says there's a "pretty significant problem" for people trying to watch Channels 6 and 12 in their new digital frequencies:
"People are calling about losing reception on channel 6. These people live in Philadelphia. They have a basic rabbit-ear antenna and theoretically they should get the signal from channel 6 with that type of set-up. But they're not."
Dombrowksi says WPVI-TV people are meeting with the FCC to try to figure out what's wrong (is it a transmitter problem, a rabbit-ears problem, or a converter box problem?) and solve it as soon as possible.
In the meantime, the helpline, the walk-in help centers, and free converter box installation are all still available.
(Graphic by KYW's Ed Fischer)
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