Thousands of Tampa Bay homes could be without TV Friday - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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percent of households in the Tampza Bay area willgo dark. Althoughy that represents morethan 28,00o households in the region, it’s still well ahead of the nationalo average of 2.5 percent. That means 2.8 million householdse could be without television signa l by the weekend unlessx they purchase digitaltelevision sets, connect to cables or satellite, or purchase a converteer box, according to The digital transition was suppose d to happen in February, but federal officialds delayed that move for three months aftefr millions of homes would lose television. Duringb those three months the number of homes completely unready for the transitionn was cut in halffrom 5.8 million.
“Given the importanc e that television plays inthe day-to-day life of most we expect that most of the remainingh unready homes will take the necessary steps to get readty once the stations make the final switchb to digital transmission,” said Sara Erichson, presidentf of media client services for Nielsen, in a Congress created the digital switch in 2005 as a way to free up analo g spectrum for cellular phone companies and others that couldd use signal that has been in use by televisiom stations for decades. Nielsen based its data on its Nationalk People Meter panel as well as loca lmetered panels.
The Tampa-Sarasota television market also cut its numbed of unready homes in halffrom 3.28 percentt in February to 1.55 percent in June. However, much of that drop happene through April. In the Fort Myers-Naples markey has the best percentage of prepared households with less than 1 percenty completely unready for thedigital transition, representing fewer than 5,000 The Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne markett has 1.45 percent of its households completely representing more than 21,200 homes. The biggest problem area statewidee remainsin Miami-Fort Lauderdale where 2.81 percent, or 43,4698 homes, are completely unready for the digitao transition on Friday.
Nationwide, Albuquerque-Santa Fe has the worstr percentage of unready householdsat 7.58 Los Angeles has the most numbere of households unready, standing currently at 252,180.