Loss of television signals is the No. 1 topic of calls pouring in to the Federal Communications Commission's call centers and local TV stations.

People who lost signal or were curious about the changes posted discussions in online forums, such as the television forum at Hawaii Threads and the Audio Visual Science forum.

Slightly more than 400 calls were taken by the FCC call centers yesterday, about half the volume of calls received on DTV D-Day, Thursday.

“;There are three primary issues,”; said Chris Leonard, president of the Hawaii Association of Broadcasters. They are loss of station signals, questions about converter box set-ups and requests for converter box installations, he said.

He saw the significant decrease in call volume on the second day as “;a pretty positive sign.”;

About 800 calls were handled by the Federal Communications Commission's call centers yesterday with another 100 calls being “;forwarded to (KITV) and to the stations who are willing to cooperate, and we've been handling those calls,”; said Mike Rosenberg, president and general manager of KITV, yesterday.

Of the 439 calls from Oahu, 100 or so reported signal loss; another 100 were related to converter box set-up issues; around 40 were about antenna issues; about 30 were requests for converter box installation appointments, while the remainder were for other things, Rosenberg said.

Additionally, there were 34 questions about purchasing converter boxes and 31 questions about how to obtain discount coupons, topics that consumers had some two years to resolve prior to yesterday's DTV transition.

From the Big Island, roughly 200 calls came in and 61 reported signal loss, as did about 50 of the 153 callers from Maui, for a total of 211 consumers around the state reporting signal loss on Thursday.

Yesterday's calls were running at about the same pace, Rosenberg said.

June Gonzales, FCC deputy project manager for the Hawaii DTV transition, said Thursday, transition day, that she took some calls from people saying “;I didn't even know about it.”;

Hawaii's broadcasters were asked to move their full-power television transmitters off their now-former site atop Haleakala some eight years ago by the U.S. Department of Defense and the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy to eliminate interference problems.

“;We didn't move our transmitters on Maui because we wanted to disenfranchise our viewers,”; Rosenberg said.

Possible relocation sites atop Haleakala met with opposition at public meetings for cultural and environmental reasons.

“;We could have moved to other areas (of Haleakala) that would not have interfered (with the government facilities) but we had to go where we were allowed to go,”; Rosenberg said.