how bad will it get?

[acroyear]

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » The Coming DTV Nightmare - Cringely on technology:

Next month there will be howls of outrage from people who have somehow gone an entire decade watching TV and ignoring all those Public Service Announcements about the switchover. What does that say about the true power of advertising? Pitiful.

Just this week the Consumer Electronics Association released the results of a poll trumpeting the fact that 90 PERCENT of TV viewers now know the DTV switchover is coming. That’s supposed to be good news.

Think about it for a moment. There are 110 million households in the U.S. with televisions. According to the Consumer Electronics Association after a decade of explaining and promoting the changeover at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, ELEVEN MILLION HOUSEHOLDS STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT’S COMING.

Comments

[pyllgrum.livejournal.com]

Never understimate the wikkful ignorance of some people.

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

Don't really see why that's all that big a surprise considering how long we've been funding abstinence only education when studies have shown it doesn't freaking work. In the last election despite Palin being corrupt, out of touch with the common man and having only 20 months experience in any real position of power 59 million people still voted for her.

Our countrymen are largely stupid and willfully ignorant and frequently act contrary to their own best interests. So it's not really all that big a shock. I fully expect those people to believe that the US has been nuked or something once their TV stops working. They'll probably blame it all on 'the libruls' and that 'colored fella' in the White House.

[syntonic-comma.livejournal.com]

(http://www.replaytv.com/)What does that say about the true power of advertising?
We got our DVR almost 8 years ago, and since then we've mostly stopped seeing commercials. Ignorance is bliss.
[Of course, I've still known the switchover is coming.]

[uncle-possum.livejournal.com]

Watch TV erratically, but when not on the road, watch a lot. I have noticed over the year, while there is much more information on the switch--
--it is fairly heavy on local TV around news time
--it is hardly there at all on cable news or the specialized networks. such as Court TV, Animal Planet, Versus, etc., which is what I watch most of the time.

Add in the use of TiVo and similar ability to avoid commercials, and I'd guess a lot of people really haven't seen much. Add in failure to pay attention to newspapers, it gets worse. Add in the phenomena already noted of lack of interest in things technological or scientific, and the survival skill of tuning out advertisements, and it does make sense.

Which leads to a thought: is it possible that ca 10% of those who currently own TV, really don't watch it that much, and really don't care. There's enough chatter out there about the demise of general broadcast media, (e.g. blogs over newspapers), that it might be possible that the viewership of broadcast TV will drop by ca 10% next month.