“Lawmakers appeared Jan. 23 to be nearing a deal that would allow television stations to move forward with the digital television transition on a voluntary basis while moving the mandatory shutdown of analog broadcasting from Feb. 17 to June 12.
Then President-elect Barack Obama told lawmakers Jan. 8 Congress should delay the Feb. 17 transition date for television stations to begin exclusively broadcasting in digital. Obama's comments came after the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) announced funding for the $1.34 billion digital converter box coupon program has been exhausted…” eWeek.com
It makes you wonder can the government to anything right? I blogged about this issue and even made a video on the subject.
This is going to be a major change and many people are not going to be ready for it and it is going to have effects that we have not even been thinking about yet. One thing is that many people have those very small cheap TV sets that operate off of 12v or battery power that they can used during an emergency. Many people have them here in FL because of the storms. They will not work.
This change is going to have a major effect. Many people are going to be upset and pissed off big time. President Bush and congress, Democrats and Republicans, fucked this up big time.
But making the deal to allow stations to do this on a voluntary basic is not the right idea. You are going to have people that will not get think it is going to happen on June 12th. People will say will you moved it to June 12 why not move it to December 31st.
Plus there are police departments and all sorts of emergency services that have spent billions and are ready to move into the TV space.
This was fucked up by Democrats and Republicans and now no one wants to face the music.
No only is congress dumb but they do not want to make any hard decisions. They have to face voters.
