Daylight savings time begins on 12 March which means that stations should begin sending PSIP data to that effect on 13 February. The details on how this process should be managed are in ATSC A/65, Annex A and FCC regulations require that all except low power stations follow the standard.
I started checking DST data several days before changes should start appearing. Today I found that KDFW, which had been skipping the process completely, finally reset the flag indicating daylight savings time was in effect. Also dropping the data that said a change was coming at midnight on the 1st.
KDFW (RF 35)
Will they handle the regular changeover process normally next week?
Several stations decided to start two days early:
WFAA (RF 8)
KTXD (RF 23)
KPXD (RF 25)
KMPX (RF 30)
Since four stations started two days early I expected many more would follow yesterday but there were just four. One at 3AM and three at 8PM:
KFWD (RF 9)
KDTX (RF 21)
KDTN (RF 29)
KAZD (RF 31)
KTXA (RF 18)
KTVT (RF 19)
KXAS (RF 24)
KDFI (RF 27)
KDAF (RF 32)
KUVN (RF 33)
KDFW (RF 35)
KXTX (RF 36)
KDFW was a bit of a surprise here as they had skipped the whole DST change thing for quite a while.
DST day. As usual, there was some variability in results. A few stations did it right, a few more were close, and some tried but clearly didn't quite understand how to do it.
The correct way to do this, as described in the standard they are supposed to be following, is to wait until the entire broadcast area has transitioned. Since the DFW market is in a single time zone, that happened at exactly 2AM CST. Setting the DS_status flag and dropping the time/day data then looks like:
WFAA (RF 8)
In addition to WFAA, KTXD, KPXD, and KMPX got it right. But they all started the process early which means that not a single station the entire transition correctly. Pathetic.
Another group of stations waited till 3AM CST. Not likely to cause any trouble with a receiver but not in accordance with the standard: KTXA, KTVT, KXAS, KDFI, KDTN, KDAF, KUVN, KDFW, KXTX. KDFW was a bit of a surprise as they had been skipping the whole DST transition process for a while.
A couple of stations performed the transition, but in a weird and incorrect way. Dropping the day/hour data at 8PM on the 11th and setting DS_status at 2AM on the 12th. Any receiver depending on that data would display program start/stop times off by an hour if you happened to look during that interval. KFWD, KDTX, and KAZD did this.
KFWD (RF 9)
A couple of stations (KHPK, KNAV) skipped fiddling with the DST data at all and stuck with standard time but inexplicably altered their time data. Briefly. Making them an hour slow for a while. Naturally they otherwise ignored the DST transition.
KHPK (RF 10)
Since I no longer have the space limitataions with my Earthlink pages I can make data from previous transitions available here rather than rely on the Internet Archive.
| 2015 | spring | fall |
| 2016 | spring | fall |
| 2017 | spring | fall |
| 2018 | spring | fall |
| 2019 | spring | fall |
| 2020 | spring | fall |
| 2021 | spring | fall |
| 2022 | spring | fall |