But he said he wasn't surprised that antennas are in high demand. Mark Wigfield, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission, said he hadn't heard that antennas were in short supply. It's difficult to say how widespread the potential antenna shortage has been. "That was definitely something we were planning for in anticipation of the DTV switch." "We have been working with our antenna vendors to get additional inventory," he said. But he said that the company had anticipated a spike in demand. He couldn't say whether other areas around the country were experiencing antenna shortages.
Justin Barber, a spokesman for Best Buy, said that as of Friday evening, Best Buy stores across the country were meeting demand for converter boxes. As for converter boxes, the representative said the store still had 242 left. The only stores that still had them in stock were in Queens. a Best Buy customer service representative at the store on Broadway and 62nd Street said that antennas were sold out in Manhattan. The Best Buy just down the block on 23rd Street and 6th Avenue only had a few antennas left by mid-afternoon. EDT the Radio Shack on 23rd Street near Park Avenue had plenty of converter boxes in the store, but it was all out of antennas.
TV antennas were in short supply in New York City Friday when full power broadcast TV stations switched to digital-only TV broadcasts.īy 1 p.m. While much of the hoopla around the digital TV transition for the past several months has focused on whether people with older analog TVs had a digital converter box to receive digital signals, a big issue for New Yorkers on Friday when broadcasters flipped the switch to digital was finding an antenna to improve their reception. "But then when I hooked up the box last night, I realized that I wasn't getting all the channels and that I probably needed a different antenna, so here I am again."Ĭoleman was not alone. "I was prepared back in February for the switch," she said. So off she went to Best Buy, to pick up the very last digital TV antenna with a signal amplifier the store had in stock at a cost of $50.
Meanwhile, using a new TV antenna with a built-in signal amplifier attached to her digital ready flat-screen TV, she was able to get all the regular channels, plus two extra channels. So she thought she was prepared.īut when Coleman hooked up her digital converter box to her TV using her existing antenna on the eve of the digital transition, she discovered that she could get every regular broadcast TV station except channel 2. And she even bought a new flat screen digital-ready TV for her living room to replace an old analog TV that was on its last legs. An indoor amplified HDTV antenna from RCA, which is owned by AudiovoxĬoleman said she had gotten her $40 coupon from the government and bought a digital converter box for her older analog TV before the first deadline for the switch to digital TV on February 17. turned off their analog TV signals and started broadcasting only in digital, but she still found herself in a Best Buy store on the DTV deadline day, Friday, buying the last amplified digital antenna on the store shelf. NEW YORK-Louise Coleman of Brooklyn, N.Y., did everything she was supposed to do before full-power TV broadcasters in the U.S.