The end of analog TV in the U.S. finally arrived Friday night and over the weekend, and according to the latest reports, American couch potatoes are—for the most part, aside from a few hiccups—still turning on and tuning in.

Indeed, one FCC commissioner called Friday's DTV transition "more like Y2K than the Bay of Pigs" (according to CNET.com). By Saturday, acting FCC chairman Michael Copps stopped short of saying that the analog shutoff had cleared home plate, but volunteered (probably with a sigh of relief) that "we're safe on third right now" (this from the Associated Press).

The AP reports that about 317,000 calls came in to the FCC's DTV hotline on Friday, the final day of analog TV broadcasts in the U.S. That's a lot of calls, but it was actually only about half of the 600,000 calls that FCC officials had expected, according to the AP story.

Of those who called, almost a third were simply confused about how to operate their new digital TV converter boxes, and most of those problems were solved once viewers were instructed to re-scan the available DTV stations in their area, the AP noted.

Meanwhile, the feared shortage of DTV converter boxes (necessary for those with analog TVs and over-the-air antennas) never materialized. That said, the Wall Street Journal reports that many viewers found they had to replace their old rooftop antennas or rabbit ears with more powerful models. (Digital signals aren't necessarily weaker than analog ones; however, while a weak analog station might still be viewable with static and ghosting, receiving a weak digital signal is often an all-or-nothing affair.)

In any case … looks like the DTV transition—which was delayed by Congress for months over fears that too many viewers weren't ready for the changeover—went about as smoothly as anyone could have hoped for.

Just last week, a Nielsen survey warned that about 2.8 million U.S. households weren't ready for the transition. But the National Association of Broadcasters has long argued that Nielsen's numbers—which included homes that already have DTV converter boxes but hadn't set them up yet—were inflated.

And now, maybe we can stop reading (and I can stop writing) about the DTV transition, and instead look forward to such new uses for the old analog TV spectrum as wireless broadband—think 4G LTE data networks, due starting in 2011 or so. I can't wait.