SADUSKY: DTV TRANSITION WILL BE 'Y2K' NON-EVENT

The DTV transition is no big deal, LIN Television CEO Vince Sadusky told securities analysts this morning following release of the broadcast group’s first quarter earnings.

“I strongly believe that from a viewership perspective this is largely going to be a Y2K event,” he said during the conference call.

Ninety percent of homes receive their broadcast signals via cable or satellite and so will be unaffected when the broadcasters turn off their analog signals and go digital only on Feb. 17, 2009, he said.

And the remaining viewers who rely on over-the-air reception will learn that they have to take action from the educational campaigns that broadcasters and the government are conducting, he says.

To continue to receive broadcast signals after the analog cut-off, over-the-air viewers will have to buy a new TV with a digital tuner, buy an A-to-D converter (preferably with a $40 government-issued discount coupon) or sign up for cable or satellite.

Those campaigns will peak after the November elections when broadcasters' advertising inventories loosen up, he said. “You are not going to be able to get away from this thing.”

“In the worst case scenario, you will have a few…grandmothers out there who will wake up and not have their TVs working…[but] they’ll have a resolution within a few days,” he said.

Although Sadusky didn’t think the transition would impact viewership, he said it was “important we were able to work with Nielsen” to move the February 2009 sweeps to March.

Following the cut-off, he said, there may be several days of “confusion and disruption” when viewers in non-meter markets may not “fill out their diaries as accurately as they could.”

Sadusky also said that LIN would derive a cost benefit from the final transition. For years, he said, the stations have operated two transmitters—one analog, one digital. Come next Feb. 17, they can turn off the analog and save money on the electric bill, he said.