DFW Daylight Savings Time Transition and ATSC

Spring 2024

Daylight savings time begins on 10 March which means that stations should begin sending PSIP data to that effect on 11 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. But they have a poor record of following the standard.

11 February

Today is when the process should begin with data for day of month and hour changing to "10" and "2". As usual several stations began the transition early. Causing any receiver that uses this data to think that today is the day to switch to DST. For one day.

Data in the plots begins at midnight on the morning of the 10th.

WFAA (RF 8)

KTXD (RF 23)

KPXD (RF 25)

KDTN (RF 29)

KMPX (RF 30)

KAZD (RF 31)

Waiting till the evening doesn't make it right:

KDTX (RF 21)

Most stations didn't do this so my DVR was fine.

Six stations managed to start the process today as required.

KTXA (RF 18)

KXAS (RF 24)

KDFI (RF 27)

KDAF (RF 32)

KUVN (RF 33)

KXTX (RF 36)

With far too many doing nothing. Not all of them exempt from the standard. Like KERA, KTVT, and KDFW. The last is a mystery as their sister station KDFI started on time.

12 February

Being a day late isn't the worst thing I suppose. Especially since schedule data doesn't extend that far. I remember once a station had a weeks worth of data but currently the maximum is three days. With 12 hours (the minimum required) is more common.

KERA (RF 14)

But after a few hours, it fell off the rails. Not only dropping the DST data but messing up time. The error increasing by several seconds and as a bonus the GPS to UTC offset going from 18 (correct) to 17. KERA PSIP data has been messed up for over a year now so this isn't much of a surprise. I have tried many times in various ways to contact the station about this with zero nothing to show for it.

KDFW (RF 35)

12 February

KERA brought back the DST data this morning. In addition there is now program description data. But only 12 hours instead of the 72 hours they had been providing. Sigh.

KERA (RF 14)

10 March

This morning at 2AM CST was the time. Of course somebody got it wrong. KERA switched to DST an hour early:

KERA (RF 14)

KDTX switched to DST at 2AM but dropped the day/time information six hours prior. Which would mess up display of schedule data for those six hours.

KDTX (RF 21)

KAZD hasn't switched yet.

KAZD (RF 31)

And for something completely different, KFWD set the DST flag at 2AM but never bothered to send the day/time data as required.

KFWD (RF 9)

For the rest of the stations that bothered to set day/time data, they completed the transition more or less OK. Some doing it at 2AM CST as required (the DFW market not overlapping two time zones) but some waiting till 3AM.

17 March

I noticed that KDFW switched to DST yesterday:

KDFW (RF 35)

Almost a week late but at least they got there.

History

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.

ATSC Monitoring

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