Is it February Already?

I happened upon a startling discovery earlier this week: the DTV transition has already begun!  I'm not talking about the few random stations here or there that have started to broadcast in digital as well as keeping their analog signal.  No, this transition is a full fledged cut off all analog signal transition, and it is affecting a large population of people in North Carolina.

I made this discovery right after I had just finished posting my last blog about the DTV transition.  I turned on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams as I like to catch up on the days events from time to time.  One of the news stories, this particular night, really caught my attention though.  It was about the DTV transition and how Wilmington, NC, has become the first market in the country to make the transition.  I have embedded the video below in case you missed the story (pay special attention to the obnoxiously large light switch that was hooked up to absolutely nothing when they flipped it on).

   

I think it is great the transition is going rather smoothly and that they are testing markets to ensure a smooth transition for the rest of us.  However, I do have a slight problem with this early transition.  First off, I have been scanning www.dtv.gov for several weeks now and don't recall seeing anything on their site about how the Wilmington, NC, television market would be making the transition so soon.  I am sure the stations that made the transition had been running the ads and crawls like they have been here prior to the switch.  However, if anyone in that area had gone to find more information about it on the main website, they would have come up short.  

I also found a story about the Wilmington transition on CNN.com.  It states that the local Walmart had a sign posted that said they ran out of the digital boxes needed to decode the signal.  So that makes me wonder, was the shortage due to lack of planning on behalf of Walmart or did the community not have enough advanced warning to get the boxes?  Or could it possibly have been that the box manufacturers haven't been able to keep up with the demand?  All very good questions I hope the government has answered before February.