Scores of Americans who live outside of metropolitan areas lost some good friends in June. And they weren’t Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.

The companions who disappeared on June 12 ranged from Wheel of Fortune’s Vanna White and Pat Zajac to Providence, R.I., television weatherman R.J. Heim.

They were the personalities on channels 2 through 13 and, for homes not served by cable TV, they disappeared permanently when VHF stations turned off their old transmitters and began sending out a less powerful digital signal on the UHF band.

It wasn’t until this week that I got to experience first-hand the impact of the federal government DTV decision requiring television stations to abandon the channels on which they have been broadcasting since the 1950s. I was shocked at how even tech-savvy homeowners could not coax the new digital signals into their TV sets.

The “South County” region of Rhode Island is not rural America, by many standards.  Located just 35 miles south of Providence, the county has numerous year-round communities — like Wakefield and Narragansett  — as well as summer vacation havens for beachgoers.  At the local Radio Shack outlet, a sales associate admitted that more than half the digital television antennas sold were being returned because it was impossible to receive the ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates that had previously supplied area residents
with news, weather, sports and entertainment.

I had planned ahead for our summer sojourn by buying a $59 device to convert digital broadcasts into an analog signal that our cottage’s 1980s-era TV set could display.  When the box did not find any signals powerful enough, I bought a $35 amplified digital antenna. That maneuver succeeded in locating four undesirable channels run by the bankrupt media organization formerly known as Paxson, perhaps best known for its religious and home-shopping networks.  Still no luck finding the mainstay Providence stations.

Failure of the recommended consumer solutions meant taking this technical challenge into the capable hands of several neighborhood macho men, all well-versed in building and repairing electronics.

We attached to a mast a commercial-grade UHF antenna that looked like some sort of Cold War military apparatus and hoisted it above the rafters of our beach cottage.  Then we employed a smart phone application that provides a digital compass so we could aim the antenna directly at the television transmission towers we were targeting, using http://antennaweb.org to get the precise coordinates.

After we wasted several quality vacation hours that should have been used consuming beers and absorbing UV rays on the beach, we determined that Narragansett, Rhode Island, population 16,361 at the 2000 census, is a television black hole for those without subscriptions to cable or satellite services.

If it’s this bad in New England, I can only imagine how challenging it will be to serve off-the-grid citizens in the rural South, Great Plains and other regions.  Suddenly, it seems likely that media bad boy Michael Wolff was correct in April when he predicted that the big three TV networks would soon have audiences no larger than a mid-sized metro daily newspaper.

Embracing new media technologies has been a defining characteristic of my professional life.  Yet I find it distasteful when government and industry turn their back on consumers who made older media successful.  Forced upgrades are fine, as long as they work just as well as legacy systems and the financial investment in modernizing is not too steep.

This digital TV conversion was characterized as an upgrade when it actually leaves millions of formerly loyal viewers, outside the regions served by insufficient UHF signals, with a choice of a monthly cable or satellite bill or no service at all.

The rabbit-ears television antenna is the only way our family stays tuned into the world during summer vacation.

In a tiny cottage in a working class neighborhood of Rhode Island’s South County this past August, no cable TV meant watching Michael Phelps and other Olympians through a veritable blizzard of static on NBC affiliate WJAR, Channel 10, in Providence, located 35 miles to the north.

Things will be different this coming summer. I will be able to re-aim that antenna until I’m blue in the face, and still the screen will be blank. Unless, that is, I take the time to buy and install a digital-to-analog converter for the cottage’s TV.

It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of television watchers will be faced with dead air on February 17 — less than four weeks from today — unless Congress acts to force the Federal Communications Commission to delay the powering down of every analog transmitter at U.S. television station.

Never mind the Israeli-Hamas war and the broadening scandals with Bernard Madoff’ and Rod Blagojevich, President Obama’s first real test in office will be whether he allows the electorate to lose Vanna White’s nightly letter turning. Unless the voters/viewers subscribe to cable, Verizon FIOS, DirecTV or Dish Network, they need to have purchased an HDTV or analog-to-digital converter box or it will be dead air time.

In recent days, Consumers Union threw its support behind a bill co-sponsored by lawmakers whose committees oversee the FCC — Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. — to delay until June 12 the switch to digital.

The three big broadcast television networks certainly want to see the HDTV switchover day delayed so they can postpone further slippage of their influence. Cable stations and Internet news sites surged in popularity during the last elections-fueled ratings sweep.

Even though the overall number of people watching the network evening newscasts fell by 280,000 viewers in Nielsen Media Research’s fall ratings period, ABC, CBS and NBC together still accounted for some 23 million watchers.

The fact that a sizable number of those viewers — those whose TVs receive their signal from the airwaves — have not plunked down $50 to $75 to buy a converter is major reason to delay pulling the plug. Those close to the TV business argue that consumers are stupid procrastinators who either missed the millions of public service announcements or made a conscious decision to ignore the Feb. 17 hard stop.

Consumers Union contends that a federal government bungled a program to dole out coupons that defray the cost of the digital upgrade.  There’s also an argument that poor people and elderly people who do not have technical skills to rejigger their TV sets’ antenna systems, have not received enough hand holding.  One very funny PSA on this topic features an octogenarian who would benefit handsomely from a visit by Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

One additional wrinkle that has developed in the years since the FCC set the Feb. 17 deadline is that a whole bunch of people are now unemployed, unable to pay for cable TV, and sitting around the house watching TV.

It’s on that very same TV they learned from the U.S. Department of Labor that new jobless claims had reached their highest in 26 years with 589,000 individuals filing unemployment claims.

Let those people keep their TVs receiving the networks and, if they are lucky, PBS, and a Paxton station that features all-Waltons weekends.

Even if Obama and Congress let FCC have their way on February 17, some smart marketers (or politician) is going to buy up thousands of analog-to-digital boxes, affix their logo and become the heroes of those who did not manage to upgrade on their own. That’s how friends are made.