The cable and consumer electronics industry is spending more than $1 billion to make sure that TV-watching Americans know they have until February to prepare their sets to receive a digital signal. It's a public information campaign so pervasive that every American will be exposed to an estimated 642 messages - on TV, radio, online and elsewhere - reminding them that if they don't take the appropriate action they will live the darkest of American nightmares:

Their TVs will stop working on Feb. 17, 2009.

Make that every English-speaking American will receive that number of nags. For other sectors of the TV audience - specifically, TV watchers for whom English is a second language, money is sometimes tight and television is a main connection to native culture - the warnings will be few.

Some representatives of that audience were sitting among the gray-haired folks in Lady Shaw Senior Center in San Francisco's Chinatown this week listening to community organizer Anni Chung explain the technicalities and practicalities of the digital TV changeover. None of the campaign's billion dollars trickled down to Chung's Self-Help for the Elderly senior care organization, but she's taken the responsibility of spreading the message to native Chinese speakers, particularly low-income seniors.

She knows there's a need. Self-Help for the Elderly found that a third of the clients it serves in Bay Area facilities receive TV over the air - as in, just with the help of an antenna. KTSF, a San Francisco station that airs nightly Chinese newscasts and programs in other Asian languages, found that 28 percent of the Chinese market in the Bay Area does not have cable or satellite; only 9 percent of those viewers speak primarily English at home.

Many of the 80 people in the senior-center audience earn roughly $700 to $800 a month. So even if they applied for and received a $40 federal voucher to defray the cost of an analog-to-digital converter box, which can cost between $40 and $70, they're worried about the out-of-pocket expense. "Bilingual news is a lifeline for these people," Chung said. She recalled that during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, much of Chinatown was blacked out, and bilingual TV and radio helped connect the community.

Translating TV jargon

"But the translation of 'analog' and 'digital' - these are not familiar words," Chung said. "And 'a converter box'? What is that?"

The federal government estimates that 34 million Americans receive their TV programming over-the-air (including 16 percent of Californians), and this month, several of the constituencies considered to be "at-risk" for being unprepared for the digital changeover are receiving some outreach. The National Black Church Initiative said it would expand its outreach program and place DTV information in the bulletins of 13,000 predominantly African American churches over the next few months. The giant Spanish-language network Univision announced this week that it would send digital squads, or "Escuadrón Digital," into predominantly Latino neighborhoods to spread the DTV word. They will conduct one-on-one sessions to explain the changeover and help Spanish-speakers apply for federal vouchers. They'll even show residents how to install a converter box.

Neither outreach effort is reimbursed by the federal government, but the feds recognize that these programs are essential to their efforts. As Todd Sedmak, a Commerce Department spokesman for the TV converter box program, said, "When Univision does something with outreach, our phones start to ring."

Reaching Asian-language speaking communities is a bit more challenging. There is no Chinese- or Japanese- or Tagalog-version of Univision, nor a unifying network of churches. Instead, there are community organizers like Chung. And lots of questions like the ones posed to her at the Chinatown senior center this week: I have an old TV. Do I need to buy a new one? (No - just a converter box.) I have a Sony TV. Do I need a Sony converter? (No.) How do I install it? (Ask your child or niece or nephew to help.)

"I'd feel better if your child went into the store to help you when you buy the converter," Chung told the audience. She's worried that unwitting seniors may get fooled into buying a new television when they just need a converter box.

Grassroots effort required

Min Chu Tom's four children live in Sacramento. The 65-year-old native of Hong Kong watches four hours a day of Chinese language programming. "I'm retired," she said through an interpreter and smiled. The Chinatown resident doesn't drive, so she'd like someone from the senior center - or from anywhere - to help her apply for a converter voucher, buy it and install it.

Others in the room said the same thing. But there's no Univision-style Escuadrón Digital to guide them through the logistics in their native language. Not officially, at least. Chung started compiling a list of names of people who need such assistance, "but we're going to need some help from somewhere to help these people."

At a forum the U.S. Department of Commerce held last month for Asian American community organizers, Vicky Wong, president of an advertising firm that specializes in cross-cultural communication, said "It's great to involve the community organizers, but where is the follow-up going to be when they have questions?"

It's one of the cultural hurdles of the DTV conversion. The federal government provides outreach numbers, translators and toll-free numbers, and a list of retailers who carry approved converter boxes. But as Benjamin Chen, a Bay Area appliance distributor said, "Getting the coupon is good, but there's no Wal-Mart in Chinatown. How are people going to get to the stores?"

It's one of those questions that even a $1 billion consumer information campaign can't answer.

Email Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.