Live Internet Television

I know that I, in the Seattle area, will wake up to lots of snow and probable vanpool cancellation tomorrow. Um, yay?! But folks in Redding, CA will wake up to a harsher and less welcome scene tomorrow:

Hundreds of Northern California residents could wake up Monday to discover that their televisions no longer receive many channels.

Three of four network stations in Chico and Redding, Calif., will begin broadcasting only in digital Monday, two months before the rest of the country. The worry is that some of the 20,000 residents who rely on over-the-air TV still aren’t ready, despite local broadcasters’ airing of thousands of ads and screen crawls to alert viewers.

“We’re in the hundreds when it comes to people who don’t have a converter box and aren’t prepared,” said John Stall, general manager of the local CBS and NBC affiliate stations, which, along with the Fox affiliate, are going digital Monday.

The transition in Northern California could be a harbinger of what happens on Feb. 17, when the whole country is required by Congress to switch to digital-only TV. (The ABC affiliate station for Chico and Redding also plans to go digital on Feb. 17.)

I know they’ve been advised to be ready for 6 months now, but still…there’s going to be some pain. When Comcast, my cable provider is down, I am lost. And these folks are not in the mindset of being paying customers with a service that is “down”…they are going to experience their TV “taken away.” I’ll stay tuned, but I think it will hurt.