An estimated 64,000 Sacramento area households could turn on their TVs Friday and find they have no signal.
Sherille Ismail is with the Federal Communications Commission. He heads up the agency’s digital TV transition for the Pacific region.
“We are a little bit concerned about Sacramento because it appears that there’s a higher percentage than nationally of people who may not be prepared.”
In fact, the Nielsen Company says Sacramento is the nation’s third least-ready market…behind the Albuquerque-Santa Fe and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas.
“It could be that many of them are procrastinators or people who have already got the boxes and have just not hooked them up. We hope that’s the case. But it may be that there some others who have not got the coupons.” '
In that case Ismail says you can still get a coupon for a digital converter box and even reapply for one if you received a coupon a while back but never used it. But he says you should do it quickly. The application deadline is July 31st.
And Ismail says if you’ve already converted to DTV and find out tomorrow after the switch that you’re not getting all your channels…hit re-scan.