One month before the government starts issuing discount coupons for set top boxes that can convert your old analog TV set into a digital ready receiver, some San Francisco Bay Area stores may be ready to handle the traffic. But most are not.

I spent the morning doing a quickie readiness survey of the San Francisco region. I called a bunch of Target, Best Buy, and Circuit City stores and asked them two questions: "Will you be selling those digital converter set top boxes for analog TV sets soon?" and "Will you be taking those discount coupons that the Department of Commerce plans to give out for the boxes?"

"Digital set top boxes? Converters? What?" a salesperson I called at the Target in Fremont replied. After a few more seconds of confusion, he transferred our call over to a manager, who assured me that Target would be selling the converters and honoring the coupons, "when the time comes."

When will that be? I asked.

"February 17th, 2009," he replied.

Ok. Time for DTV Transition 101. The manager was right that the government has set 02/17/2009 as the Last Day of Analog Broadcasting. After that day, all TV stations in the United States must transmit using a digital signal.

But the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications Information Agency [NTIA] has set the eligibility date for the coupons, each worth $40 towards a Coupon Eligible Converter Box [CECB], at January 1st, 2008.

In other words, next month.

That manager's answer, however, wins the Genius Prize compared to the Albany Target's response. "Converter boxes?" the salesman told me. "I don't know anything about that."

Best Buy on Harrison street in San Francisco drew a blank as well. A Best Buy guy in Oakland on Mandela Parkway did just a little better. "I expect we'll start carrying them around the second quarter of next year, March," he explained.

"Do you know about the discount coupons?" I asked. "I sure don't," he replied.

This level of cluelessness is not the fault of the people I spoke to. Their corporate managers are supposed to educate them about the DTV transition. In fact Target, Best Buy, and Circuit City have all sent statements to the Federal Communications Commission assuring the agency that they plan to train their sales associates in preparation for the big educational campaign the government has planned.

"Target, through published and distributed materials, will inform both its sales associates and its consumer guests of the DTV Transition and the NTIA CECB program, including needs of some guests for CECB products in aid of their existing TVs rather than for the purchase of new displays," Target corporate wrote to the FCC on October 16, 2007.

While Target and Best Buy obviously have a way to go, the stores that seem most ready to make good on that commitment are the Bay Area Circuit City outlets. A sales associate at the Fremont Circuit City wasn't sure at first when I asked her my questions, then remembered.

Yes, she told me, we've already got a Samsung converter box for $169 dollars. As for the coupons? "I think it starts in January," she replied.

Ditto for the Market Street Circuit City in San Francisco, which is also selling that Samsung , a sales associate explained.

But as for the coupons?

"I don't know when we're going to have that," he said. "I don't know when that's going to go into effect. When Congress does it maybe. I don't know."