Jack Dempsey, general manager of CBS affiliate WJHL in the Tri-Cities market of Tennessee and Virginia, spoke to a local Rotary Club last week, trying to explain the DTV transition and how the folks that use rooftop antennas and rabbit ears may lose their TV pictures in less than 18 months, if they don't take action before then.

Dave Madsen, general manager of KTIV, the NBC affiliate in Sioux City, Iowa, is scheduled to give pretty much the same talk at the local Augusta Lutheran Church in a couple of weeks.

It's no coincidence. Dempsey, Madsen and many other broadcasters are being recruited and scheduled by the NAB's DTV Speakers Bureau, part of the trade group's multifaceted, multimillion dollar campaign to make sure that every American knows about the transition, particularly those who live in the 20 million homes that rely on over-the-air reception.

NAB “has made the DTV transition its single highest priority,” NAB Joint Board Chair Jack Sander told the FCC last month in an open letter.

“The goal of our campaign is for no consumer to lose access to free local television programming after Feb. 17, 2009, due to a lack of information about the DTV transition,” the Sander letter says.

NAB is still being stingy about details of the campaign and how much is being spent, although it has outlined the plan in the Sander letter and in an earlier letter from NAB President David Rehr to members of Congress.

However, NAB is expected to reveal more of what it is doing over the course of September when the DTV transition will be in the political spotlight.

In the Senate, the Special Committee on Aging, chaired by Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl, will convene a Sept. 19 hearing on the DTV transition.

And the Senate Commerce Committee is also likely to hold a hearing.

At the FCC, comments are due Sept. 17 on how to go about “creating a coordinated, national DTV consumer education campaign.” And the commission has scheduled a Sept. 26 consumer education workshop on the subject.

Meanwhile, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is holding a DTV Expo on Sept 25 featuring Rehr, CEA President Gary Shapiro and CEA President Kyle McSlarrow.

It's politics that is motivating the NAB campaign.

By NAB's count, 19.6 million of the 112 million TV homes—17.5%—rely solely on over-the-air broadcasting for their TV service and another 14.7 million subscribe to cable or satellite, but have at least one set that is not hooked up and still receives TV off air.

Right now, as the transition heads into its final stretch, TV stations are simultaneously broadcasting analog and digital signals. But come midnight on Feb. 17, 2009, they must switch off their analog signal and go digital only.

Congress fears that unless the people who live in the 34.3 million off-air homes are warned about the analog cut-off, many may wake up on the morning of Feb. 18 with TVs that no longer work and take it out on their local congressmen.

Congress is trying to head off such a disaster by allocating $1 billion for a program that will subsidize the purchase of digital-to-analog converters that will enable old analog TV sets to receive the new digital signals and by pressuring the NAB and the other TV trade groups to educate the public about the transition and the availability of the converter boxes.

NAB has gotten the message from the Hill: Consumers may blame Congress if things get ugly in February 2009, but Congress will blame broadcasters.

Working together, the trade groups have distilled their consumer message to the essentials.

If your sets are hooked up to cable or satellite, don't sweat it. You don't have to do anything.

If your sets are not hooked up, you have three options:

1)   Buy a new set with a digital tuner. By the end of this year, virtually every set in the stores, HD or SD, will have one.

2)   Subscribe to cable or satellite.

3)   Buy a converter box with a government coupon that will allow you to buy knock $40 off the anticipated price of $60 or $70.

To make sure its campaign is as effective as possible, the NAB has been conducting fresh research on principal the targets of the campaign—the over-the-air viewers. The research includes focus groups with various types of consumers, including the elderly, African-Americans and Spanish speakers.

Armed with the research, NAB will get the message out through a PR push, PSAs, paid advertising and an extensive grassroots effort, of which the speakers bureau is just a part.

It will also encourage elected representatives to do some of the work by briefing Hill staff and by providing congressional offices with “toolkits”—PowerPoints, sample press releases, sample op-eds, talking points—so that members and | More …