NEW YORK, NY – With a couple of weeks left before the U.S. broadcast industry shuts down its analog broadcast spectrum and converts completely to digital, Nielsen estimates that the percentage of U.S. households that are "completely unready" has been reduced to 2.7%. That's an improvement of two-tenths of a percentage point from two weeks earlier, Nielsen said in an update sent to clients Tuesday.

A year ago, 9.8% of U.S. households were completely unprepared, according to Nielsen's estimates, and earlier this year, the Obama Administration moved the deadline for mandatory digital broadcast conversion from its original February 2009 deadline to June 12th.

Nielsen estimates that 8.6% of U.S. TV households are still "partially unready" for digital broadcasting, meaning they may have one or more TV sets in their households that are still incapable of receiving a digital broadcast signal. That percentage is down from 11.9% in May 2008.

Hispanic households remain among the most unprepared, according to Nielsen's estimates, with 4.7% completely unprepared for the conversion.

Nielsen's data indicates that Oklahoma City, is the most prepared local TV market, with only 0.48% of households completely unready.

Albuquerque/Santa Fe, is the most unprepared, with 8.40% of the market's households completely unready.

Copyright 2009 MediaPost Communications. All rights reserved. From http://www.mediapost.com. By Joe Mandese.
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