At noon today, Wilmington’s five commercial broadcast stations are scheduled to become the nation’s first to permanently switch to all-digital signals, serving as a test of the government-mandated transition that other stations across the country will make in February.

“It’s like landing on the moon,” said Constance Henley Knox, general manager of CBS affiliate WILM. “We’re making history.”

The switch to digital TV is the biggest change in television viewing history. The switch in Wilmington was fairly easy due to the fact that only 8% of the home relied on antennas.

The most difficult issue in the talks with Aftra surprisingly did not hinge on compensation of artists for work in new media, as during the recent three-month writers’ strike. Instead, it had to do with the granting of permission. Actors have traditionally had the right to approve the use of clips from their work on television. But producers had asked for the ability to use clips on the Web without permission from each actor, arguing that flexibility was needed to counter the widespread piracy of shows on the Internet.

There are a still a number of unresolved labor issues in Hollywood, but this new agreement looks like a solid first step for settling differences.

The traditional September-to-May broadcast season ended last week with a whimper. In the 18- to 49-year-old demographic highly favored by advertisers, ABC, CBS and NBC each recorded double-digit declines, while Fox showed a slight uptick of 2 percent over last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. During the same time frame, ad-supported cable channels showed a 9 percent audience gain.

The move towards cable dominance has been going on for years, so it comes as no surprise to most. Cable companies bet heavily on original programming and have been able to steal untold percentages of market share rather easily from the broadcast networks, who continue to stumble badly.

It’s not all bad news, of course, for broadcast television, but good news is becoming harder to find.