Wow! I never thought such a simple question would take so many directions.
Personally, I think stations should be required to use their real broadcast channel for identification. Yes, the initial confusion might be huge but would not last long. Something akin to changing a telephone number.
No, no, and no. Here's why.
First, as you note, "the initial confusion might be huge." In a DTV conversion process that's already confusing to viewers, the goal all along has been to avoid adding any needless additional confusion to the process.
There is tremendous value to being able to explain to viewers, "We'll still be on channel 21 once you set up your converter box, and CBS will still be on 8, and NBC will still be on 10," and so on. There's even greater value in not having to explain, "Well, if you set your box up now, NBC will be on 58 - but then it will go back to 10 on February 18th, but CBS will stay on 45."
There is, furthermore, even greater value to stations - who have already, after all, incurred massive expenses in building and maintaining what amount to a completely separate second broadcast plant during these last few years of dual analog/digital operation - in being able to maintain their familiar brand names through the transition. Even more so, there's value to the stations in keeping
everyone's brand consistent. In my market, two of the four commercial stations get to return to their heritage VHF channels of long standing (10 and 13), while the other two end up on unfamiliar dial positions (8 on 45, 31 on 28). That's largely luck of the draw during the FCC reallocation process, and why should some stations benefit while others get hurt?
Viewers have been accustomed to using both VHF and UHF channel numbers for 60+ years now and, in the long run, it will cause less confusion than retaining a bogus (vacated) channel number. (I can see some budding TV-o-phile some years from now asking "why does channel 39-DT still brand as channel 5?)
Viewers have been accustomed to channel-number
branding for 60+ years now, and the US is decidedly unusual in continuing to link our TV stations to physical RF transmission frequencies. As I've noted in other posts on this topic, if you go to the UK, for instance, and turn on an older analog TV set, it will have buttons for "channels" 1-4. Those are presets that are configured when you buy the set, and they point to local UHF transmitters that could be on any channel in the UK bandplan. In London, your "channel 1" (BBC1) button might point to RF channel 21; in Manchester, it might actually be RF channel 32. But it doesn't matter, except to the engineers. Or you could go to Mexico, where the national networks are branded by their channel numbers in Mexico City, but are usually on completely different RF channels anywhere else. People in Tijuana don't seem to have a problem with "channel 7" appearing on UHF 27.
Even with our branding in the US, it makes not a whit of difference to me whether the station I know as "channel 8" is reaching my TV set through OTA analog at 180 MHz, or through OTA digital at 656 MHz (RF channel 45), or on digital cable at 558 MHz, or via DBS satellite at 12.something GHz. Doesn't matter - I punch in "8" on whatever device I'm using, and there's "channel 8."
Of course, it would cause stations to develop new bugs and hopefully, given current economic conditions, they might just opt to drop the damned things. That alone might make the DTV conversion worthwhile.
Totally separate and unrelated issue...but feel free to keep dreaming about it, if it makes you feel better.
