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TV times are changing. Back in the day, 1961 to be exact, NBC and the Walt Disney Co. used a cartoon duck with a supercharged mouth to explain color television to the masses. Ludwig Von Drake used a musical prop, “The Spectrum Song,” to illustrate his point.

And the neat thing was that you could watch the show in color, if you were fortunate enough to have one of the half-million color television sets in use at the time, or in black and white, if you were not.

Leap ahead to Feb. 17, 2009, the day when TV as roughly 81,000 of us in the Des Moines area now know it, comes to an end. It is the day when the U.S. government blocks the radio frequency spectrum that delivers what is called “free” television through the air, down the antenna and into your home. It is the day free TV goes digital.

If you’re not up to speed on the digital switch by then, the tube goes dark.

Where are “Uncle Walt” Disney and his mad scientist of a duck when you need them? Well, the warning signs are everywhere: in public service announcements, in discussion groups led by Iowa Public Television, and on the Internet.

“We’re trying to tell the viewers that come February 18 of next year you have to do something proactive,” said Bill Hayes, director of engineering and technology for IPTV.

For the most part, people who subscribe to cable, satellite or television services delivered through telephone lines are home free, you might say.

According to Nielsen Media Research, about 19 percent of the 425,760 television households in the Des Moines area received their signal over the air in February. That means those sets are connected to antennas of various descriptions. Nielsen includes 30 counties in its Des Moines area survey.

Here are the choices for people who receive their television signal over the air: purchase a television set with a built-in converter that will decipher the digital signal or, if you shun cable and satellite transmission in favor of an antenna, buy an external converter that will translate the stream of ones and zeroes that make up digital data back to an analog, or radio, signal.

That message to “buy new” isn’t always easy to convey.

“Many people, especially viewers who are 50 or older, still view televisions as appliances and are reluctant to replace old sets until they no longer operate,” Hayes said.

A recent survey of IPTV members found that 32 percent of those who responded said they receive their signal over the air.

Hayes is at the forefront of IPTV’s efforts to tell people about the switch to digital. The public television station has spent $47 million converting its transmission towers to carry digital signals and replacing studio equipment. About $42 million of that money came from Iowa taxpayers, said IPTV spokeswoman Jennifer Konfrst.

Hayes leads meetings in libraries throughout the state to explain the switch and tell people about their options.

The meetings “always are a little bit grueling at the beginning,” Hayes said.

Many times, the majority of people in his audience don’t want to face the prospect of spending several hundred dollars, at the least, on a new television that has a digital converter built in.

Televisions manufactured, shipped or imported after March 1, 2007, are required to contain the internal converter. Shipments of digital-ready television sets to retailers increased to 27 million in 2007 from 5.5 million in 2003, with the average price decreasing to $954 from $1,571 over the same period, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, which tracks such data. Forecasts call for 31.8 million sets to be sold this year at an average price of $917 so far this year.

Hayes points out that the switch to digital doesn’t dictate a switch in television sets.

The federal government has tried to soften the financial blow by offering coupons worth $40 off the price of external digital converter boxes. That means a $49 converter box sold by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. would cost $9 with a coupon.

Wal-Mart stores have carried the boxes since mid-February, trying to coordinate their distribution with the government’s mailing of coupons, said Melissa O’Brien, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the U.S. Commerce Deptartment, is administering the coupon program. Coupon applications were available Jan. 1, with two available per request. Congress allocated $990 million for the program, and the coupons will remain available until that money is gone.

The NTIA has mailed about 300,000 coupons a week since Feb. 19 in an effort to clear 3.7 million applications. “We’re going to be ramping this up” to about 800,000 coupons a week, said Bart Forbes, a spokesman for the agency.

Wal-Mart runs public service announcements about the coupon program from televisions at display kiosks. Coupons can be ordered online at www.dtv2009.gov.

O’Brien said the retailer trained its workers to deal with questions about the digital conversion.