Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today on behalf of the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s (NHMC) regarding preparing consumers for the Digital Television Transition.

My name is Alex Nogales; I am the President and CEO of NHMC.  NHMC is a 21-year old non-profit Latino civil rights, media advocacy organization based in Los Angeles, California.  We have 13 chapters nationwide and our mission is to 1) improve the image of American Latinos as portrayed by the media; 2) increase the number of American Latinos employed in all facets of media; and 3) advocate for media and telecommunications policies that benefit the Latino community.  NHMC is also the Secretariat for the National Latino Media Council, a national coalition comprised of 15 of the largest Latino Civil Rights Advocacy groups in the nation.  Additionally, NHMC is an Executive Committee Member of the Media and Democracy Coalition, a national coalition comprised of many of the largest mainstream media advocacy groups in the nation.  Recently, NHMC joined the DTV Transition Coalition membership.

 

As you know, the transition from analog to digital television brings great opportunities but also great challenges. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that 21 million U.S. households rely solely on over-the-air television.  Of these households, about 48% earn less than $30,000 per year per household.  These 21 million households include a disproportionate number of Spanish language speakers: one-third or 7 million people who will be impacted by the digital transition are Spanish language speakers.  It is also estimated that one-third of the 21 million households include residents over the age of fifty, many of whom live on fixed-incomes; millions of these households will be in rural areas or will include persons with disabilities. Further, according to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), African-American households are 22% more likely to rely exclusively on over-the-air reception.  In summary, households impacted by the digital transition will be minorities, low-income families, living on a fixed-income, and requiring a well-defined and more specific educational outreach campaign then the overall population requires.  I will refer to the groups that I just mentioned as our target groups or target population.

A more specific educational outreach campaign to these target populations must be pro-active, consumer-friendly and culturally, linguistically sensitive.  Appropriate outreach to disabled, minority, rural, low-income and senior citizens is essential.  For example, the public service announcements promoting this initiative must include closed captioning for the hearing impaired and should be available in Spanish as well as other relevant languages.  The call-in centers handling the voucher questions must include live-operators that include Spanish-speakers, wait time should not go over ten minutes and must accommodate telecom relay services that make it easier for the deaf to communicate by phone.  And it is not sufficient to translate the English materials to Spanish.  Those doing the outreach must communicate with Spanish speakers in a manner where their message will be understood. Cultural awareness here is fundamental for the outreach campaign to be successful.  Already, we have seen coordination problems that can come up in major national campaigns that involve translation.  “Converter boxes” was translated in four different ways by the NAB, the DTV Transition Coalition, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC was actually using two different terms for the boxes.  It is imperative that we avoid confusing the consumer by using different words for key terms.  Let’s agree on a translation and remain consistent.  We prefer “caja convertidora” because it is a precise translation of converter boxes and easy for the Spanish consumer to understand.

            Congress allocated $5 million to NTIA to educate consumers about the DTV coupon program. The FCC has only requested $1.5 million for consumer education effort in its 2008 budget request.  That’s a total of $6.5 million to educate 300 million people, about 2 cents per person.  This is a seriously under-funded consumer education program.  When Berlin, Germany transitioned to DTV, it spent $984,000 to educate about three million people, or 33 cents per person.  Why is the City of Berlin willing to make this expenditure on its citizens, but our nation is not?  Furthermore, the FCC does not plan to begin its public education campaign until 2008, when the converter box coupons and the boxes are expected to be available on January 1, 2008.  In our opinion, the FCC campaign is starting a year late.  Consumers need to know about the DTV transition generally, and the coupon program specifically, as soon as possible, but certainly well before NTIA makes the coupons available to the public.  We need to start seeing Y2K-level consumer education efforts soon or you will have a big problem on your hands.  Consumers need to be aware of how the transition will impact them.  They need to know 1) how to figure out if they have an analog or digital TV; 2) that their analog TV sets will go dark in less than two years without a converter box if they are not connected to cable or satellite service;  3) they need to know that they don’t need to purchase a new TV set, that over-the-air television will continue to be free, will offer them many more channels and will give them a better picture even on an older set; 4) consumers need to be able to access user-friendly instructions on how to connect the converter boxes to their TV sets and be able to contact a live person to help them with the connection if they have difficulties .

We strongly encourage the NTIA to bring in community based organizations (CBOs) that represent the disabled, minority, rural and senior advocates that will help develop a thorough outreach plan to ensure that the outreach and educational component of this program is solid and has no holes.  We can’t afford to make mistakes on a program that is a first-come, first-serve program where the populations that are in most need of these coupons run the risk of being the last to hear about the program. 

NAB estimates that about 5 percent of the population knows that the digital transition is taking place.  I suspect the NAB is being optimistic.  Not many people outside the Beltway have heard about the digital transition and its possible impact on their households.  Not enough has been done so far to educate our target groups that this historic change is taking place and that their over-the-air televisions will go dark after February 17, 2009 without a converter box.  The outreach program needs to start today and more effort needs to be made by the NTIA, FCC and the DTV Transition Coalition to reach community-based organizations that focus on the target groups.  We need more people outside of D.C. to know about the transition and be able to communicate in a clear and understandable manner to those that will be impacted.

Finally, NHMC objects to the two-phase plan that NTIA is proposing for the distribution of the coupons.  In the first phase, where $990,000,000 is allocated, all U.S. households will be able to apply for up to two $40 coupons per household to purchase converter boxes.  The second phase is only open to households that certify in writing that they rely on over-the-air reception.  Once the $990,000,000 is spent, those that apply late or do not find out about the coupon program in time will be burdened by an added certification that may deter them from applying.  Changing eligibility mid-course will result in needless customer confusion.  Indeed, the certification will be a deterrent to low-income families, especially those that do not dominate the English language. Ladies and gentleman, I have no doubt that the disenfranchised population that will be the most impacted by the digital transition will be the last to apply for the coupons. This being the case, having to certify in writing that they rely on over the air reception is just adding an additional burden that will discourage many of them from applying for the converter boxes.  A two phase-plan with an added burden for those that are hardest to reach doesn’t make a lot of sense.  If the reason for this two-phase system is because NTIA thinks there is a likelihood that the program will run out of funds before all the impacted households have obtained their coupons, then NTIA should go back to Congress and ask for additional funding.