DFW Daylight Savings Time Transition and ATSC

Fall 2026

Daylight savings time ends on 1 November which means that stations should begin sending PSIP data to that effect on 2 October. 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 and the FCC has an even worse record of enforcing it.

1 October

As usual, someone jumps the gun.

KFWD (RF 9)

KAZD (RF 31)

Not as bad as in the spring but February being a short month really confuses people.

2 October

Starting at 9PM is still a day early:

KDTX (RF 21)

As usual, a surprisingly small number of stations started the process on time:

KHFD (RF 13)

KXAS (RF 24)

KDTN (RF 29)

KUVN (RF 33)

KXTX (RF 36)

3 October

Better late than never:

WFAA (RF 8)

KERA (RF 14)

KTXD (RF 23)

KPXD (RF 25)

KFAA (RF 30)

But still too many stations that should know better haven't set their day/time data.

24 October

One more joined yesterday:

KDFI (RF 27)

Their sister station (KDFW) still hasn't. Strange since the same staff runs both. The Texas Association of Broadcasters even lists the same person as chief engineer.

31 October

The change is tonight and there are still several stations that should know better (and are required by FCC regulations to know better) that haven't signaled the change is approaching: KTXA, KTVT, KDAF, and KDFW.

I looked at the schedule for KTVT on my "Smart" TV and at the 2AM switchover it is messed up. The DTVPal DVR on the other hand is fine. But it noticed that most stations are signaling the 2AM change and went with that.

1 November

Daylight savings time ended at 2AM (DST) this morning. The way it was supposed to work is that at 2AM, they would clear the dst_status flag and return the day and hour data to zero. A few did that. Too few. In fact there was exactly one station that set the DST data on time (2 October) and switched out of DST on time: KUVN.

Others found various ways to screw up.

KERA switched into standard time an hour early:

KERA (RF 14)

KBOP added the day/hour data at 7PM yesterday and then performed the switch two hours later:

KBOP-LD (RF 20)

KDTX dropped the day/hour data at 9PM and then switched to standard time at 2AM:

KDTX (RF 21)

As usual, KHPK skipped fiddling with the DST flags and just changed the time by 3600 seconds:

KHPK (RF 10)

KTXA quietly dropped the ds_status flag at 8AM without bothering with all that hour and day data. Their sister station (same engineering staff) at KTVT also skipped the day/hour data but are still in DST.

KTXA (RF 18)

KTVT (RF 19)

Besides KTVT, two other stations are still in DST: KDAF and KDFW. Neither bothered with the day/hour data.

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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