DFW Daylight Savings Time Transition and ATSC

Spring 2026

Daylight savings time begins on 8 March which means that stations should begin sending PSIP data to that effect on 9 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 and the FCC has an even worse record of enforcing it.

7 February

As expected, some stations are early. Really early.

KHFD went at 5PM yesterday. A full three days early.

KHFD (RF 13)

With five more today.

WFAA (RF 8)

KERA (RF 14)

KTXD (RF 23)

KPXD (RF 25)

KFAA (RF 30)

Since there is no month in the data, these stations are saying that the change happens tomorrow, Feb. 8, not next month. It isn't what they mean, but it is what the data says.

8 February

After yesterdays rush, just a few more today.

KFWD (RF 9)

KAZD (RF 31)

Fortunately less than half of the local stations so my DTVPal DVR wasn't effected.

9 February

Doing it late yesterday is also wrong:

KDTX (RF 21)

And now, those that did it on time:

KTXA (RF 18)

KTVT (RF 19)

KXAS (RF 24)

KDTN (RF 29)

KDAF (RF 32)

KUVN (RF 33)

KDFW (RF 35)

KXTX (RF 36)

Leaving only a few stations that haven't bothered. The low power stations aren't required by FCC regulations to comply with the standard. But KDFI is run by the same people as KDFW so why KDFI didn't bother is a mystery.

17 February

KDFI finally joined in. They also kicked their PSIP hardware and it began providing reasonably up to date schedule data again. Instead of data for events from over a week ago.

KDFI (RF 27)

8 March

The way that this is supposed to work is that once the entire area covered by a TV station enters DST, the DS_status flag is set and the hour and day data gets dropped. Since DFW is far from a time zone boundary, that means 2AM CST. A few stations do that. Several wait till a bit later which doesn't cause any trouble. Then there are those that flub it.

KBOP-LD did this a little before 8PM last night.

KBOP-LD (RF 20)

KHFD waited until almost 6PM:

KHFD (RF 13)

KDTX took a unique approach. Dropping the day and hour data at 8PM last night and setting the DS_status flag at 2AM. Which would result in schedule data being displayed incorrectly in between those two times.

KDTX (RF 21)

KHPK, as usual, gave the entire thing a miss and instead jiggered with their broadcast time. Adding 3600 seconds.

KHPK (RF 10)

I doubt if any PSIP hardware supports doing that automatically so this required manual intervention. Seems an odd way of avoiding reading the instructions.

As of 7PM, KDFI still hasn't switched.

10 March

A couple of days late, KDFI joined the party:

KDFI (RF 27)

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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