Wichita ? Most Kansas television stations plan to cut off their broadcast analog signals Tuesday and switch to digital, despite national legislation allowing them to postpone the conversion for four more months.

“I am anxious like anybody. Something as big as this, anything can happen,” said Kent Cornish, executive director of the Kansas Association of Broadcasters. “But based on statistics and based on as prepared as I think our stations are, I hope the problems are minimal.”

The government delayed the mandatory shutdown of analog TV signals to give people with older TVs more time to prepare. A government program that gives out $40 coupons to subsidize digital converter boxes has a waiting list of 4 million coupons; each household can get up to two.

But Cornish said just 1 percent of Kansas households that receive television only with an antenna are still waiting on coupons.

“Albeit we don’t want anybody without television, but it is a small number compared to the confusion created by waiting another four months,” Cornish said.

At least two Kansas stations — KSNW-TV in Wichita and KSNT-TV in Topeka — are not shutting down their analog signals next week.

“There is a lot of confusion right now,” said KSNW engineer Ed Miller. “We are going to keep analog on in Wichita until June, but that can change tomorrow. Basically we are operating on a law that doesn’t exist yet.”

Kansas City television stations, which have viewers in Kansas and Missouri, also are waiting until June 12 to turn off their analog signal, Cornish said.

The added cost of maintaining both analog and digital signals after Feb. 17 is an unbudgeted expense for stations looking to reduce costs and avoid job losses, he said. In addition, some stations deferred replacement or repair of aging analog equipment because of the mandated conversion.

“One station in Topeka is operating at reduced power because it is failing, and can fail at any time. It makes no sense to try to keep it on for four more months,” Cornish said.

KAKE-TV in Wichita has been running television spots about the conversion for months, plus putting information about it on its Web site. Like other Kansas TV stations, it has conducted “soft tests,” where it transmitted briefly only on digital so viewers could test their equipment.

KAKE marketing director Bryan Frye has been checking on the availability of converter boxes on store shelves in Wichita and has found no shortages.

KAKE has been running crawls every hour on the hour with its programming. It plans to have a full staff on hand on Wednesday morning to handle any problem calls, Frye said.

“It kind of feels a little like Y2K. We are going to pull out all the stops, we are going to have everybody on board. You know, full alert,” he said. “It is going to happen and everybody is going to go, ‘Hmmm, OK.’ You know, I am kind of half kidding, but at the same time I think people are so well prepared.”

Their Colby station went fully digital in August, he said.

“There has been nary a peep,” he said.

Although the biggest concern has been that senior citizens would be the least prepared for the digital conversion, a Nielson survey of the Kansas City market showed that the group most prepared was those over age 55, Cornish said. Overall, the survey, issued last week, showed 3.7 percent of area viewers were not ready.

Those who were least prepared? People ages 20 to 30.

“Seniors got the message early on because broadcasters did such a marvelous job. Television is extremely important to them and they did what was necessary to get ready,” Cornish said.

“I think young people like my kids, they are watching on the Internet and they got a lot of other things going on and all of a sudden reality is going to hit them,” he said. “I think they will run out and get it done before the 17th.”