Civil rights advocates, worried that minority groups remain uninformed about the national transition to all-digital television, are calling on Congress to do more to remedy the problem.  

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) recently issued a report noting that “at stake is the ability of the nation’s most vulnerable populations to maintain uninterrupted access to their key source of news and information and emergency warnings: free, over-the-air television.”

The LCCR report found that non-white and Hispanic households rely on over-the-air television more often than white households do and that large numbers of over-the-air television viewers are older or disabled.

The report also cited data from the Government Accountability Office that indicated 48 percent of over-the-air signal viewers earn below $30,000 per year.

“Sooner or later, Congress has to wake up to the fact that a lot of people are in the dark and they’re going to have to fix it,” said Mark Lloyd, a vice president at the LCCR, on a conference call. Lloyd also argued that Congress has not provided enough funding for public education and direct assistance to the “vulnerable population” that depends on over-the-air television for news and emergency information.

The report called for further congressional action, including “appropriate additional funding to provide public education and outreach.” According to Nancy Zirkin, executive vice president of the LCCR, Congress allocated $5 million for education about the transition, a sum she called “insufficient.” With this amount of money, said Zirkin, “the DTV transition will not go as smoothly as everyone would like.”

The Senate passed legislation prior to the Fourth of July recess that could provide more funding for public education and direct technical assistance. The money would come from the remnants of a $10 million federal grant to low-power television stations to purchase digital signal converters. The bill, entitled the DTV Transition Assistance Act, could be on the House suspension calendar this week, according to the LCCR.

A spokesman from the House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet panel said full committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) “is greatly concerned about ensuring consumers continue to have access to their local television signals after the transition.”

The spokesman added, “The report from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights raises valid concerns about the transition and the need to ensure consumers are fully prepared.”

While there have been several public awareness campaigns about the transition, the LCCR and industry groups see the success of them differently. In a release issued on Monday, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) published survey data showing that 85 percent of African-Americans stated awareness of the switch to all-digital television formatting. Lloyd countered that although awareness amongst African-Americans is high, it still lags 6 percent behind the national average.

In an e-mail, Lloyd said only one-third of African-American viewers and 36 percent of Hispanic viewers responded with the correct date of the transition in a survey taken in June. But these numbers are up from 13 percent and 29 percent, respectively, from a previous survey.

“The numbers are promising,” said Linda Yun, a spokeswoman at the NAB. Yun noted that the NAB is working with minority communities and airing television and radio announcements about the transition. “I wouldn’t say we’re worried. These are some of the challenges of educating as many consumers as soon as possible before the transition … our work is not done yet,” she added.

But the LCCR claimed that current public outreach efforts have a lesser impact on non-English speakers.

Lloyd said, “We need to make sure we’re speaking to these people in the language that they rely on and trust. [The current public service announcements] do not work with the people we are working with.”

Zirkin expressed hope that Congress could dole out more public funds if the situation gets worse: “If this goes badly, they will be happy to allocate whatever it takes.”