Quote:
Originally Posted by Orrymain
Everything takes time, and I agree the numbers are small, but along with all of those statistical numbers, you do have to take into account that this is a major change in how we do business in America. It's perhaps the biggest change in all of TV history, so I don't think that using care and diligence and doing all they can to try and make sure the country is ready is out of line. The percentage doesn't matter; it's the change itself which is huge that needs to be considered.
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I agree completely. But being someone from the Broadcast side of the game, I can tell you delays have been terrible though a lot of the problem was the local broadcasters themselves.
This thing started 13 year ago with the passage of the Comm Act of 1996. Seems like a lifetime ago even at my age.
The
FCC had to do more than one delay. Even though the airwaves were regulated to begin setting up digital transmitter by 1999, most stations due to funding and looking at the prospect of dual electric bills and transmitter maintenance waited until the last minute. The
FCC had said that all station (I am forgetting specfic dates, so please forgive me and now they are hard to google as they are not current events and gone from many sites).
The station had until sometime around 2005 as the final date to have their digital transmitters one the air. Well so many stations waited (good reasons for budget etc) until the last minute there was not way the limited number of transmitter builders could complete the orders in time, much less the stations get them and installed and running. So the date was move to July 2006 to be on the air or loose their digital channel allocation. That was the threat that got things moving on the station end, loosing their digital license and having to reapply in markets where channels were hard to find due to core channels being chopped to 2 - 51. A lot of people didn't make the July 2006, but enough did and those that had work in progress kept building and most of them were running by early 2007.
Then to appease the TV manufacturers the
FCC allowed TV makers to keep selling TV's without
ATSC tuners up through Christmas of 2006. I really think part of the silence was to help them move the TV's so they didn't have to retool for as long as possible. Something that would take a lot of digging to find proof.
Then it wasn't until March of 2007 that all TVs had to have a
ATSC tuner of be tag on the them explaining they didn't.
Now the average life of a TV is 5 to 7 years these days (they used to last longer I know). So there was no mandate to sell TV's with an
ATSC tuner until 2 years before the cut off as defined at that point of Feb 2009 (the first cut off was about 2006).
So allowing non
ATSC TVs sold so long mandated many of converter boxes.
Now so you see the TV stations were already given two chances and Feb 2009 was actually at least the second deadline, not the first.
Plus add that in Dec of 2007 Congress called the
FCC (partially a partisan thing due to the Dems taking over) to a hearing. They wanted to know how the
FCC was doing on informing the public. Well they said they had not. A new woman was appointed that by about mid Jan 2008 got the ball rolling forcing local stations to start PSAs talking about the Feb digital switch over.
This left people thinking that it was a hard switch from analog to digital on Feb 17th. Up until then they could not receive digital. I even answered that question in some forum today, that they could go ahead and switch. Even though it was noticed, the stations, NAB and
FCC just kept calling the the digital switch on Feb 17, 2009.
Then people were told to get converter boxes, of which many were put in closets because it wasn't Feb 17th yet and they didn't need them nor know they would already work.
No one talked about the fact that many that had received analog fine on VHF analog now needed UHF antennas. So then the
FCC told them after Feb 17th delay the PSAs had to say that people might need a VHF.UHF antenna. Fine
But they still missed one huge thing. There are town now that are all UHF, that after June 12th will have a VHF station. So now we have people thinking they have been ready for a year or more for digital to find they loose a station on June 12th because they don't have outdoor VHF antenna!
Then combine with that there are still quite a few stations that think they can cover the area they did on UHF running 500 to 1000
KW ERP with 20
KW on VHF because at one time the
FCC said it would work! Now those in the know understand it takes 40 to 70
KW to cover that area on VHF.
Then I know there are those that don't care. Growing up, after leaving home I was without an TV many times for years at a time. I didn't even miss it. I had stuff to do. If the transition had of happened during those times, I would have not bothered to do anything.
So to conclude, this has been one long screw up. Not to forget we should be using MEPG4 not 2 and there was plenty of time back in the late 1990's to have changed that standard.
It's too late. It's going to happen on June 12th regardless of anything.
If they wanted to delay this with a lot of education it's already apparent they blew it or didn't care. Stations said they could not afford the air time. But after spending hundreds of thousands on new system, the could not run PSAs they were forced to run by the
FCC to tell their viewers they could go ahead and use digital? Even the one special we had here wasn't until Jan 2008 on PBS, shown once on Sat afternoon when they knew they would not upset anyone preempting a program.
So anymore delay and a lot of the reason this delay wasn't any more successful is there was no intent to make it so! Lots of good talking about old people without converters, the poor, etc, but no action.
It is time to turn off the analog blow torches and go digital. I could make an argument also to delay again, but it has become time period.
The stations already spent another 4 months of electricity on analog, already rescheduled tower crews at least once. Another delay would put more stations out of business, cause more layoffs at stations and some tower crew companies to go bankrupt.
It is time.........
2.7% not ready for Digital Transition
Agree. Another dtv delay, and the stations would probably need a bail out.
Linear Mode
