THE FRONT LINE: JANUARY 2009
The “Digital Delay:” An Empty Gesture
On January 26, the U.S. Senate voted to delay the analog TV shutdown until June 12. It’s a bad idea and will accomplish little, other than to provide cover for members of Congress in future elections.
After years of planning, billions of dollars expended, and a blitz of public service announcements,
the impending shutdown of analog TV broadcasting — scheduled for February 17 — is about to
be delayed one more time, to June 12.
Concerns about viewer readiness were expressed in early January, both by members of the incoming Obama administration and by politicians including Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.), chairman of the Senate’s Commerce Committee, and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA).
Further political momentum was created by the announcement that the Commerce Department’s NTIA DTV converter box coupon program had run out of money.
Apparently, the NTIA had both pulled off a neat trick by both overestimating and underestimating demand for converter box coupons: Overestimating, in that only one out of every two coupons mailed to households have been used to date (as of this writing, about 18 million out of 44 million mailed), and underestimating, in that demand for at least one coupon has put close to 3 million additional requests on a waiting list.
The problem is compounded by the fact that coupons have a 90-day window before expiration, meaning that millions of unused coupons must languish until they have no value before replacement coupons can be used to pare down the waitlist.
There are other problems that have put a scare into Washington. One is the fact that February isn’t exactly the best time of year to do outside antenna work if you live in the northern states. Another would be a report that hundreds of Wilmington, NC homes lost TV signals completely when that city’s TV stations transitioned to digital in September of last year.
It’s worth noting that the transition to digital TV has been going on since 1997, when the first pioneering stations signed on the air. Since then, we’ve moved from “the 8VSB DTV system doesn’t work most of the time” to “it works pretty well most of the time.”
Every TV set manufactured after July 1, 2007 includes a terrestrial digital tuner along with its analog tuner, and DTV converter boxes are plentiful (over 40 models are currently being sold) and relatively cheap.
You may recall that the DTV transition was originally scheduled for midnight, January 1, 2007, but fears about consumer readiness caused Congress in 2005 to push back the day of reckoning to February 17 — a date allegedly chosen so it wouldn’t interfere with the 2009 Super Bowl. (Football trumps commerce?)
Now, those same members of Congress are in a panic because of several studies that claim Americans still aren’t ready to make the move to digital TV. On January 22, Nielsen Media Research reported that 6.5 million TV households, or 5.7% of all U.S. homes, still weren’t ready for February 17. (That number implies 94.3% of U.S. homes are ready to go digital!)
In essence, the 12-year transition from analog to digital TV is being held up because six out of every 100 homes “isn’t ready.” That stance is absurd, because it supposes that 100% compliance is required for this transition (and any major societal or economic transition) to work.
The fact is; there will always be those who procrastinate. I suspect that by June 12, the number of homes that still aren’t ready to pull the plug on analog TV will remain largely unchanged. For some folks, the train simply needs to leave the station before they take action.
And yes, I’m well aware of households where senior citizens and low-income families are either intimidated by the coupon program, or lack access to a computer to order coupons. Understandable, so why not engage a neighbor or relative who has (a) access to the Internet, (b) can submit a written request for coupons, or (c) can dial 1-888-DTV2009 and place a coupon order over the phone?
Better yet, just buy a box and install it for your technically challenged friends, or grandparents. $60 isn’t going to break your bank.
Here’s why the delay to June 12 is little more than a gesture. The Senate legislation is essentially a soft extension, meaning that any broadcaster who is ready and able to make the switch on February 17 can still go ahead and do so.
And you can bet there will be plenty of stations that will, at the stroke of midnight. Why? Because of the continued costs of maintaining that second transmitter, not to mention site rental (many TV stations don’t own their towers or transmitter shacks) and labor costs, AND maintaining the back-up analog transmitter.
For a major market TV station, we’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars per month — a significant expense in this recession that’s negatively impacting TV station advertising revenue. And who wants to choose between keeping a redundant analog TV transmitter running and cutting loose employees at smaller-market TV stations?
In a New York Times story, Paula Kerger, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), estimated that delaying the analog shutdown to June 12 would cost PBS stations an additional $22 million, as many leases for transmitter sites and tower space that were set to expire on February 17 would need to be extended.
On January 22, New York City public television stations WNET (Channel 13) and WLIW (Channel 21) said they were cutting their combined $186 million budget by 8 percent and reducing their staffs by 14 percent, or about 80 positions. And that action was likely based on the assumption that the two stations’ analog channel 13 and 21 transmitters would go dark on February 17.
So far, the National Association of Broadcasters hasn’t taken a position one way or the other on an extension. As the pre-eminent lobbying group for broadcasters, they are surely sensitive to member’s issues with unnecessary expenses in these difficult economic times. But no one wants to be seen as disenfranchising TV viewers, not with a new administration in the White House that has pledged to do right by the American people.
As always, Washington will do what it can to avoid taking the blame for a process it initiated back in the late 1990s. Public safety agencies will complain about the delay in accessing their new radio spectrum. AT&T and Verizon have said they can wait a little longer, while Qualcomm (MediaFLO) is telling Congress to “get on with it.”
My advice to readers is to stick to the original schedule, and plan for lots of static on analog TV sets after 2/17. This transition has been going on long enough, and there’s no good reason to delay it further. All aboard!
