What IS the big deal? I honestly don't understand it. If by some freak of nature, someone does not know about this transition by now and they have not prepared their tvs, what is the WORST thing that could happen?
Well, to be fair, the worst thing that could happen is that the person has no effective means of monitoring government-issued notifications in an unexpected emergency. That is the only sound foundation for the delay, and it is a pretty thin one, if you ask me, for reasons I'm sure will come up later in the thread.
If they haven't prepared by now in the THREE FREAKING YEARS this has been coming (and actually approved TEN years ago) then they aren't going to finally wake up and prepare in the next three months. Another delay is just stupid.
And the surveys were trending towards an asymptote, meaning that the number of people who will
become prepared between the time of the survey (this was December) and the time of the transition (whenever that may be) is going to be statistically insignificant. Basically, at this point, the only thing that is going to motivate a significant number of those who are unprepared to become prepared is losing their television reception entirely.
I heard someone talking on the radio this morning how it'll help "millions of Americans" by delaying the switch. REALLY?
I think they're referring to the fact that about 3 million Americans aren't "ready". However, there is no reason to believe, and several reasons to disbelieve, that the delay will actually result in those people becoming ready.
The hold up is that the millions of poor people who cannot just run out and buy a new tv or install cable must be able to also make the transition to digital. There were vouchers made available so you could get a "box" to put on your old tv (atenna) to make it work with digital but the government ran out of vouchers.
First, there was no reason for those folks to wait as long as they did. Second, even if the coupon program didn't go to a waiting list, many of these procrastinators applied for coupons too late to receive them before the transition, given the advertised six-week wait for coupons after application.
Evidently our elected officials just don't have enough important things to worry about so they need something to keep them busy.
I think it is more concrete than that: In a way, the administration sees the transition as an
inevitable PR mess -- there was no way it could have been designed so that it wouldn't have been. In a way, it's the gag gift for winning the 2008 Presidential election... a stinker that whoever got elected was going to have to deal with. There is no way for the administration to come out of it looking good, even though the intention of the transition was 100% "good".
It's like a mud bath at a spa: Pretty icky while you're going through it, but afterward it feels pretty good, right?
Anyway, figure that the delay puts the ball, to some extent, back in the broadcasters' court. They now can switch on February 17
of their own accord, but in doing so, the viewers who get upset about that can be directed to point their ire at the broadcaster, instead of at the administration, because the decision to switch on February 17 was the broadcaster's decision.
So it is a smart and effective way to reduce the stink of this inevitable stinker.
And since when did TV become a "necessity" that the government should have even provided these vouchers in the first place?
Since the government decided to use television to promulgate emergency response notifications. The use of television, specifically, is necessitated by the need to ensure that such notifications are accessible by as many people as possible, including the deaf (who can read the closed captions) and the blind (who can hear the audio).
