During its 29-year history, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration has sometimes been a non-factor in broadcasting and cable policymaking in Washington.

That is certainly not true today.

Now under the direction of Assistant Secretary of Commerce John Kneuer, the agency is deeply involved in the DTV transition, which culminates on Feb. 17, 2009, when broadcasters must cease analog broadcasting and go digital only.

Congress has charged NTIA with making sure that all Americans know that after the DTV deadline their trusty old analog TV sets will no longer receive signals off-air without a digital-to-analog converter box.

An estimated 20 million homes still rely solely on over-the-air broadcasting for television. And millions more with cable or satellite service have a set or two that continue to get their signals through rabbit ears.

It’s also NTIA’s job, Congress says, to make sure those converters are available when they’re needed and to distribute $40 government coupons to consumers who want to buy them. The full price of the boxes is expected to be $60 or $70.

Congress is giving NTIA $1.5 billion to carry out its duties and to cover all those coupons.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY Editor Harry A. Jessell, Kneuer maintains that everything is on track, that early next years coupons will be sent out and consumers will find converters in stories to spend them on. And he is looking forward to getting a better handle on things at NTIA’s DTV conference in Washington on Sept. 25, a week from today.

On a separate matter, Kneuer says that his agency is willing to referee the increasingly heated battle between the high-tech industry and broadcasters over sharing of slices of broadcast spectrum, the so-called white spaces. All the parties have to do is ask.

An edited transcript follows:

How’s the transition going so far?

The transition in general is going very well. And our role in the transition—our coupon program to assist consumers as the transition concludes in February of 2009—is also going well. We’ve put together specific time frames to meet our statutory obligations and we’ve been on schedule or ahead of schedule.

We named IBM as the contractor that is going to do the fulfillment on the coupon program. It is world-class operation. They’ve hired Ketchum Inc., which is, again, a world-class public affairs outfit, to perform the consumer education, informing consumers and making consumers aware of the coupon program.

You’ve put together a conference on the DTV transition next Tuesday and have a panel with the heads of NAB, NCTA and CEA. What do you expect to hear from those guys?

I expect to hear what their plans are, what they’re doing. We’ve been working closely with the [DTV Transition Coalition] and have been participating in the coalition since its inception.

The real importance of having this public forum is not so much for us to hear what they’re doing, but for other groups to hear what they’re doing so that they can align their efforts.

So if there are other panelists, other participants, other people in the audience, other people listening over the audio stream, they can then lend their voices and give feedback to the coalition saying, hey, if we sync up this way, we’ll improve things, or have you thought about doing the following, or here’s an effort we’re undertaking and we’d like to integrate it with yours. That’s really the benefit that I think that comes from this.

I hear a lot from the industries on the DTV transition, but what I don’t hear from are the interest groups—the AARP, minority groups and all those. What kind of feedback do you get from those people?

You should be there on the 25^th because they will all be there with us. They’ve been members of this coalition from the outset. AARP’s mission is to serve senior citizens. So one thing they can do is help inform them about the transition and they’re doing that.

The same goes for a variety of other groups that serve different foreign-language speaking constituencies or different economic demographics. So they’ve all been very focused, very involved and working collaboratively with us, broadcasters, consumer electronics, cable and the rest.

As of today what would you say the public’s awareness level of this really is?

The public awareness of digital television is high. That is manifest in their activity in the marketplace. We are selling tens of millions of high-def TVs. It’s football season and people are rushing to get access to HD.

I think there is less of awareness about the conclusion of the digital transition in February of 2009 and that’s largely because we haven’t really launched the [awareness] effort yet.

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