[Jeffhs]

The first stations to switch last night were channels 3, 19 and 43 in Cleveland, although I did not see the actual cutoff of the analog signal since I have cable (Time Warner, the cable operator in my area, uses direct digital feeds from the TV stations, not over-the-air signals picked up via antennas). I had no choice but to see the event on cable, as the OTA signals in this area are too weak to have been seen in analog with an antenna, and channel 3 (the NBC station serving northeastern Ohio) does not even reach here OTA.

The other six local stations (5, 8, 23, 25, 55, 61) waited until midnight to ring down the curtain. A PBS station 60 miles southwest of here (WEAO-TV 49), which is carried on Time Warner Cable in my area, shut down its analog signal at 12:01 this morning. That station must have had some problems with its digital signal immediately after the transition, as I watched part of a Charlie Rose interview program at midnight and found the video and audio terribly out of sync. I found it weird, to say the least, to see Rose's guest on my TV screen and hearing the sound about 30 seconds later. Fortunately, as of 1 a.m. EST or so, however, the problem was corrected and the show ran to completion without further incidents.

The commercial TV stations in this area did not have any issues whatsoever with digital freezeups, video/audio synchronization problems, or anything else--their transition was seamless and transparent, at least to those of us watching on cable. I do not know whether any of those stations made an announcement, ran a crawl, or gave any sort of warning that their analog signal was about to disappear forever, although I remember a home-shopping station on channel 67 in a town near where channel 49 is located switched to digital early (about six months ago, IIRC) and did show a screen crawl announcing the end of their analog transmissions.

Channel 3 is remaining on the air in analog as a "nightlight" station for the next 30 days, running DTV conversion info and emergency information as necessary.

Perhaps every Cleveland TV station did run a crawl last night, moments before cutting their analog signals, but if so, I didn't see it as the cable carries only the stations' digital signals these days (TW cable, the entire NE Ohio/NW Pennsylvania system, was converted to 100-percent digital about a year or so ago).

R. I. P. analog TV in northeastern Ohio

1947 - 2009