Thousands of Tampa Bay homes could be without TV Friday - Boston Business Journal:

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percent of households in the Tampa Bay area will go Although that represents morethan 28,000 households in the region, it’s stilk well ahead of the national average of 2.5 That means 2.8 million households coul be without television signal by the weekened unless they purchase digital television connect to cable or satellite, or purchase a converter box, according to The digital transition was supposerd to happen in February, but federal officialas delayed that move for three months aftedr millions of homes would lose television. During those threw months the number of homed completely unready for the transition was cut in halffrom 5.
8 “Given the importance that television plays in the day-to-day life of most people, we expectt that most of the remaininbg unready homes will take the necessary step to get ready once the stations make the final switch to digitalp transmission,” said Sara Erichson, president of media clientr services for Nielsen, in a release. Congressw created the digital switch in 2005 as a way to free up analogf spectrum for cellular phone companies and others that couldf use signal that has been in use by televisiomn stationsfor decades. Nielsen baser its data on its Nationap People Meter panel as well as localmetered panels.
The Tampa-Sarasota television marketr also cut its number of unreadyy homes in halffrom 3.28 percenr in February to 1.55 percent in June. However, much of that drop happened through April. In Florida, the Fort Myers-Naples market has the best percentages of prepared households with less than 1 percent completelyt unready for the digital representing fewerthan 5,000 The Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne market has 1.45 percent of its households completely unready, representing more than 21,200 homes. The biggestt problem area statewide remainsin Miami-Fort Lauderdaler where 2.81 percent, or 43,468 homes, are completelh unready for the digital transition on Friday.
Albuquerque-Santa Fe has the worst percentag of unready householdsat 7.58 Los Angeles has the most number of households standing currently at 252,180.