There is a real possibility the federal government will delay implementing the looming switch to all digital broadcasting scheduled for February 17th, which is a long way from where we were when we last wrote about this only a couple of weeks ago.
Consumers Union, the sponsor of this blog, wrote to key members of Congress and the outgoing and incoming presidents seeking such a delay last week.
The Obama transition team followed the next day with a letter of its own to members of Congress supporting a delay, touching off an outpouring of support from legislators. It has also touched off a smaller but still significant outpouring of support among lawmakers, broadcasters and telecom industry groups for leaving the transition date alone.
As a result of all that, top lawmakers in both the House and Senate are now working on legislation that would delay the transition for at least 90 days.
Regular readers of this blog know we have repeatedly singled out for well deserved criticism the two agencies in charge of the switchover – the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission. It would be extremely charitable to say that both agencies have continued to fiddle as the digital television transition moved closer and closer to disaster on February 17th.
The last straw for us was the abrupt announcement two weeks ago by NTIA that its $1.5 billion program to provide consumers with $40 coupons toward the purchase of converter boxes to make older, analog televisions capable of picking up over-the-air digital signals had run out of money.
That’s right, the coupon program that was supposed to be the centerpiece of helping consumers through the DTV conversion was officially broke and likely to stay that way through the last critical month leading up the February 17th switch.
For the sake of millions of consumers who have been badly served or failed completely by the government on the digital television transition, we are hopeful Congress will move quickly to delay the transition date.
And let us emphasize this was the last straw in an ongoing series of incompetent and indifferent move by the two agencies toward consumers in the ongoing run up to the transition.
For some inexplicable reason NTIA put a 90-day expiration date on the coupons. To make matters worse, the agency won’t allow consumers with expired coupons to reapply for new ones.
This was particularly cruel given that NTIA, the FCC and the broadcast industry strongly pushed consumers to order their coupons when the program began last March. Those who heeded that advice discovered there were few, if any, converter boxes available before their coupons expired. This was particularly true in the case of the lower-priced boxes most consumers wanted. Now all of those consumers who did what the government and the broadcast industry told them to do are out of luck.
For the sake of millions of consumers who have been badly served or failed completely by the government on the digital television transition so far, we are hopeful Congress will move quickly to delay the transition date.
