Direct and cable were already getting the digital feed of channel 3. That's according to the manager of WCIA in the Ask the Manager forum of channel 3.
But do understand that the "digital" feed from WCIA-DT varies between cable & DBS. If you notice on the DirecTV spreadsheet, their POP is in Springfield & since day 1, they pull the WCIA feed from the WCFN-DT transmitter here in Springfield, since it is VERY difficult to pull WCIA analog off-air over here in Springfield. (WCFN-DT carries WCIA on subchannel .2 & WCIA-DT does the same for WCFN on their side of the DMA, which is how some cable systems on the east side of the DMA get MNTV) When WCIA went HD a couple year's ago, they also made the WCIA subchannel on WCFN-DT HD as well. So, D* was forced to crop the WCIA-DT feed for the SD feed for our local CBS. (they do NOT have our locals up in HD yet) So, D* subs in our market didn't have to see the CBS bug whenever the prog was in HD.
Also FYI, some of the smaller cable systems on the western end of our DMA, had to start pulling WCIA from the WCFN-DT feed as well & ran into the same issues as D* does. Obviously some of these smaller systems can't (or won't) get a direct fiber feed & couldn't pull WCIA directly OTA from Champaign, either.
Comcast here, OTOH, gets BOTH WCIA-SD & HD via a direct fiber feed from their Champaign headend & relays it over to our Springfield headend.