Tuesday, February 17, 2009

I want my DTV

How do you expect a government to run an entire healthcare system when this is how they run a simple transfer to DTV?

From the WSJ.....

Don't change that channel. If you've turned on a TV in the past six months, you've probably heard that today, February 17, 2009,
is the day that broadcast television is supposed to switch to digital signals from analog. After the transition, older televisions that are not hooked up to cable, satellite or fiber-optic service won't work.

But here's the rub. Today was the day the big switch was supposed to happen. It was written into law back in 2005. But two weeks ago, Congress delayed the transition to June 12. So the digital revolution will be televised, but not until late spring -- at least for that small fraction of Americans with rabbit-ear antennas still perched atop
their TV sets.

That's right -- after all that advertising, all those public-service announcements about February 17, and despite nearly four years to
plan for that date, Congress itself switched at the last minute.

The official explanation is that the Department of Commerce ran out of money to issue coupons for digital-converter boxes to people who applied for them. These boxes cost between $40 and $80. And Congress, in 2005, decided to subsidize the converters by issuing a $40 coupon.

Then last November, Commerce warned that it might run out of money to issue coupons if Congress didn't lift a $1.34 billion financing cap. Congress did nothing. Commerce also suggested that, since nearly
50% of the coupons were expiring unused, Congress could amend the law to allow more coupons to be issued under the cap by taking into account the actual redemption rate. Congress declined to do that too.

More....

1 comment:

Brian said...

Rhetorical question: why do we even need a Department of Commerce?