Now, if I was charged with the task of picking the place where I would turn off the analogue TV signal first I wouldn't pick somewhere so remote that the Freeview digital TV service isn't accessible there, but presumably that's why I'm not in charge of the country's airwaves. Analogue TV signals will disappear in the Whitehaven area of Western Cumbria on 17 Oct this year - yep, in just over six months time - after which date residents there will need a satellite dish to pick up even the basic free to air channels. Analogue signals will then start to disappear all over the country, until everyone is watching digital by 2012.
Now, I don't want to keep wittering on about this (though, I'm going to), but while about 79% of UK households now have access to digital TV (though I note its only 73% in Whitehaven) surely nearly every one of those households still has at least one or more extra TVs still relying on analogue signals, most digital systems not being very good at servicing more than one set, especially if people want to watch different channels in different rooms (which they do). Plus many people still switch over to analogue for the purposes of recording things to video or to access the vastly superior teletext system that analogue provides instead of that fancy and fun but ultimately rather irritating interactive text content service you get on digital. Now, either there's something going on in the background I don't know about, or this thing is going to be a complete disaster.
To what extent the turn off in Whitehaven in October will be a disaster remains to be seen. Obviously the government are making an extra special effort to ensure everybody is informed about the switch over there, and that they are able (technically and economically) to switch to digital - and I think we can expect a considerable government spend on the first switchover initiative in a bid to ensure it's not a PR disaster that could threaten the government's wider digital switchover schedule. Personally I think it would be better if it was a PR disaster, given that the wider schedule seems wholly unrealistic, but then I did say I was going to stop wittering on about this stuff, so I will. Promise.