Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 14 years and 10 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

A moment of silence for analog TV …

… ok, that’s enough. If you didn’t realize it, today was the official (finally!) switchover from analog to digital TV broadcasting. If you’ll recall, the original February 17 deadline was delayed by Congress to give households more time to prepare. What’s strange is that back in early February, when the 17th was fast approaching, all of my local stations were running crawls and news stories reminding people of the upcoming transition. Then, after Congress delayed the switch, it fell out of the news. I don’t think I saw a single news story or crawl this week about today’s switchover. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it myself until the anchor on the morning news said “if you’re watching us right now you’ve successfully survived the switchover to digital television.”

From what I’ve read, about 6 million homes were unprepared for DTV back in February. Estimates are that 3 million homes are still unprepared today. I guess those people will figure it out pretty quick today when all they’re receiving over their rabbit ears is snow.