The standard analog TV with a big CRT picture tube, which used to be the only type out there, still has a lot of market share. The flat screen digital TV's are coming on, it's the only type on sale at Walmart, and it offers wide screen and an number of digital goodies such as displaying the name of the program on screen to aid channel surfers. When you surf onto a commercial, (the usual case) you can see what program will come on, after the commercials.
The cable companies haven't figured out what type of TV to broadcast too. Some channels like Fox News broadcast in "Widescreen" mode, essentially the NTSC standard def format but they leave the top and bottom of the screen black. This looks poorly on a standard analog TV, but on a new digital TV you can push a button and stretch the picture both horizontally and vertically to fill the screen. It's a little fuzzy compared to real high def, but not bad. Clearly Fox is favoring viewers with the new widescreen TV's.
Then some channels don't bother to broadcast the program name fields. Since this helps the viewers with digital TV's and doesn't degrade the signal for analog TV's, failure to broadcast it means the suits at HQ are brain dead. The program name display is sure fire bait to attract channel surfers and raise their ratings. You would think even the most brain dead suits would catch on sooner or later.
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