Obama Urges Delay of Digital Transition
President-elect Barack Obama is urging Congress to postpone the Feb. 17 switch from analog to digital television broadcasting, arguing that too many Americans who rely on analog TV sets to pick up over-the-air channels won’t be ready.
In a letter to key lawmakers Thursday, Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta said the digital transition needs to be delayed largely because the Commerce Department has run out of money for coupons to subsidize digital TV converter boxes for consumers. People who don’t have cable or satellite service or a new TV with a digital tuner will need the converter boxes to keep their older analog sets working.
Obama officials are also concerned that the government is not doing enough to help Americans — particularly those in rural, poor or minority communities — prepare for and navigate the transition.
Meanwhile, media companies, cable providers, etc. have already committed billions of dollars to the transition. They have hired people, lined up resources to handle questions, ordered extra phone lines, and on and on and on - all of which will be wasted by delaying the transition that’s only a few weeks out. Sorry, but this has been delayed again and again. If you haven’t gotten your act together by now, turn on the radio.
The messiah has spoken.
Though shall delay digital transition.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 08, 2009 at 1933 hrs
hey now the media giants can ask for there bailout from the monies lost to this delay.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 08, 2009 at 1934 hrs
If they can’t get TV signals, they can’t be brainwashed.
Posted by Steve on January 08, 2009 at 1947 hrs
Steve, dat’s what I was gonna say!
Tell the beautiful wife I will try calling again Friday!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 08, 2009 at 1950 hrs
Bad idea. Extending a deadline never results in more people being ready on time. So they have to pay full price for the converter. Big deal. They should have struck while the iron was hot.
Posted by Mike on January 08, 2009 at 2031 hrs
I have to agree. What the hell, everybody’s known about this for months. This is a bad time to make anything cost extra, for cryin’ out loud.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 08, 2009 at 2039 hrs
Ummm ... why is he spending time on a problem that has a solution?
Posted by hsgbdmama on January 08, 2009 at 2058 hrs
Because he is a democrat and this one is easier to deal with than the Burris “That is a senate issue” or the “We can only have one president at a time” Israeli issue.
Posted by fishaddict on January 08, 2009 at 2321 hrs
He’s just pandering.. Probably going to come on a news conference talking about how the “poor and disadvantages minorities haven’t been able to afford a converter box because that required calling an 800 number and ordering a coupon”
Don’t forget this is the same guy who a month or so ago promised to “throw his weight around” to get a college football playoff.
I’ll make my Captain Obvious prediction today that in the next 4 years we’ll see King Obama stick his thumb in places government has never gone before. Mark my words.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 09, 2009 at 0030 hrs
Would somebody please tell me why congress got involved with this to begin with?
Did some senator think the video of himself on C-SPAN just wasn’t good enough?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 09, 2009 at 0703 hrs
This program was bi-partisan and supported by the Bush administration, but again, I’m standing in the way of cheap shots at Obama.
Figure it out. The conversion to digital was necessary as a technological advancement, but if large numbers of viewers are left behind already embattled advertisers loose eyeballs.
Even Michael Powell, Bush’s FCC chair, in the NY Times this morning was urging pushing back the deadline because the estimates fell way short.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 09, 2009 at 0717 hrs
Keith-Is there a sense that TV viewership is going to drop? I have a really hard time believing that will happen. The tube is so strongly inculcated into society that people will find their way to viewership one way or another, don’t you think? Don’t advertisers know this?
I’m an Obama guy, but this does seem a little like pandering. But then again, so does every other bailout request.
Posted by Mike on January 09, 2009 at 0930 hrs
This funny, and was so predictable. For the last year one could not watch a TV show without seeing a notice about the digital transition. And for the last few months I swear I cannot watch more than 15 minutes of TV without seeing a notice.
And all along my wife and I were saying that when the day finally arrived, there would be massive outcries about how people are not prepared, “they never knew” or “didn’t have enough time”., blah, blah, blah.
I think that many people are actually too dumb to realize that if they have cable or satellite already, they don’t need to converter. The converter is only needed for over-the-air reception. Poor people always have cable TV. They’d sooner give up food than lose their cable TV or cell phones. Just any bankruptcy attorney.
The reality with Obama on this is that there are business and campaign contributing forces behind the delay. More “change” in Washington, right?
Posted by David on January 09, 2009 at 0957 hrs
Am I missing something here? This is TV. It is not like people are losing electricity or heat.
If we delay, the same people who are not ready now will not be ready then. I actually wonder if there is a real problem anyway.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 09, 2009 at 1000 hrs
Once again, the government has the perfect opportunity to solve a problem but instead they are going to try to “do something” which will probably cost a shit-load of money and not solve the problem anyway.
What BETTER way to get the procrastinators off their f’ing asses than to have their TV go blank!!! PROBLEM SOVLED.
Those people (if they really exist) will be in the store WITHING AN HOUR buying a converter box.
Instead the government is going to push back the deadline and ENABLE all the procrastinators to procrastinate some more. Completely DEVOID of logic and completely TYPICAL of government policy.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 09, 2009 at 1101 hrs
Oh Good God!!
I live in the pilot market for the transition. We had the BIG SWITCH! on September 8 last year.
The FCC must have spent millions in advertising, local visits, open forums and the like. The only thing they didn’t do was go door to door delivering the damn converter boxes.
Guess what? There were still some lazy-butts that screamed after the conversion. Oh Well… As stated before, its TV for crying out loud. The sky did not fall, the world did not stop turning.
Flip the damn BIG SWITCH! on time and get it over with. Because I can guarantee, you will all be as tired of the PSAa as all of us were. Geez!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 09, 2009 at 1315 hrs
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