T-minus 25 hours and counting!  At noon tomorrow, KNME will complete the federally mandated switch to Digital TV, by shutting down our analog signal.  That signal has serviced central and northern New Mexico for over 50 years now.  Be sure you tune in right before noon tomorrow for a special tribute to the pre-DTV world of KNME (put together by outstanding promotions producer/director Michael Privett).

For many of you, the switch will have little to no impact on your day tomorrow.  As we have mentioned in the past, folks who watch KNME through a cable or satellite service will see no changes after the switch.  Those companies are taking care of the digital conversion for you.  The folks who may experience issues tomorrow will be those of you who watch “over the air”, or in other words use rabbit ear antennas to watch your favorite PBS shows. For those people action will be required by tomorrow at noon, or KNME will go to black on your set for good.  The solution for those folks is one of the lovely converter boxes that we’ve been talking about ad naseum now for the last two years.  If you haven’t already requested your $40 coupon to help offset that cost, it’s not too late.  Here’s a link to the government’s website where you can order one.

Keep in mind, you may also need to buy one or two antennas to go with that converter box, and there is no coupon to help with that cost. What is available is lots of help if you are still having problems, or don’t know what antenna to buy, for instance.  KNME’s DTV hotline will be up for a few more weeks at least.  You can call with your question during business hours (9am-5pm), Monday-Friday.  The number is 1-877-DTV-KNME.  Another great resource are the local walk-in centers which will stay open until the end of the month.  Here are the details on those:

Coronado Center
    6600 Menaul NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110 Cottonwood Mall
   10000 Coors Blvd. NW Albuquerque, NM 87114
Walk-In Center
   1606 Central Ave. SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
Santa Fe Place
   4250 Cerrillos Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87507

And, last but not least, there is a service available for in-home help with installation or other technical issues.  In Santa Fe, just head to ExpertDTV.com.  Or, in Albuquerque call 505-440-9473 or 505-797-9473. You can also find out much more about the DTV switch on our main DTV webpage.

The good news in all of this is that the DTV switch will mean more KNME for all of our viewers.  Instead of just one channel of PBS programming, we will now have 4, including the Spanish programming channel Vme on Channel 5.2, and channel 9.1, which will include the popular PBS world programming.

Best of luck to everyone making it through tomorrow!  We’ll see you on the other side!

Public Affairs Team

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 11:34 am and is filed under nmif. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.