700k called for digital TV transition aid this past week

A federal hotline to help handle the transition over to digital television on Friday received 700,000 calls this past week.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it received 300,000 calls to address the transition from analog antennas to digital television on Friday alone, the day of the transition.

“Things went about as smoothly as we could have hoped,” FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said in a statement. “It’s looking more like Y2K than the Bay of Pigs.”

Adelstein said that the FCC’s extensive outreach had done the best it could to prepare citizens for the transition, including halfing the number of unprepared households since near the original deadline in February — before it was extended by Congress.

The FCC’s transition website received 2.5 million page views in May alone, the commissioner said.