Digital Transition Contest Hits YouTube

In case you didn’t know, come February 17^th 2009 all televised programming in the U.S. will be broadcast exclusively in digital. And with less than four months before the deadline, millions of Americans have yet to make the transition. To ensure that they do, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is launching the “Digital TV: Convert Now!” contest on YouTube.

The contest calls upon on the creativity and imagination of the YouTube community to spread the word about the pending digital transition. Users are being asked to make a video, no longer than three minutes, that demonstrates what people need to do to make the transition and simplifies the steps they need to take. The contest launches this week and will run until December 10th, 2008. Full contest entry details can be found at www.youtube.com/dtvtransition.

To help kick off the contest, the popular country music band Whiskey Falls created a call-out video (see below) explaining the details and encouraging people to participate. As the lead singer Seven explains, “We’re looking forward to seeing your video, and to helping everyone get ready for the DTV transition! ‘Cause we are America!”: