The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 5/11/09 Section: News

Media Credit: John Locher Fabian Saldivar, left in green shirt, helps Alfonso Arredondo, holding his two-month-old son Emmanuel Arredondo, by explaining a digital converter box outside of the La Bonita Market in North Las Vegas, Nev. Thursday, June 11, 2009. The switch from analogue to digital television will start tonight. A table set up by the FCC at the market helped answer questions about the switch and equipment needed to update televisions to work with the new signal. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, John Locher)

NEW YORK (AP) - TV stations across the U.S. started cutting their analog signals Friday morning, marking the final signoff for a 60-year-old technology and likely stranding more than 1 million unprepared homes without TV service.

The Federal Communications Commission put 4,000 operators on standby for calls from confused viewers, and set up demonstration centers in several cities. Volunteer groups and local government agencies were helping elderly people set up digital converter boxes that keep older TVs functioning. Any set hooked up to cable or a satellite dish is unaffected.

"When you're alone like me, that's my partner," Patricia Bruchalski, 82, said about her TV.

Bruchalski, a pianist and former opera singer in Brooklyn Park, Md., got assistance Thursday from Anne Arundel County's Department of Aging and Disabilities and a community organization called Partners in Care. After her converter box was installed, Bruchalski marveled that digital broadcasts seemed clearer and gave her more channels - about 15 instead of the three she was used to.

"You're going to be up all night watching TV now," volunteer installer Rick Ebling told her.

Around 15 percent of U.S. households don't have satellite or cable, and they tend to be poorer. Nielsen Co. said minority households were less likely to be prepared for Friday's analog shutdown, as were households consisting of people younger than 35.

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