Editorial

Congress delays inevitable switch to digital

Friday, February 6, 2009

We've noticed a curious tendency, among deliberative bodies from the smallest local board to the U.S. Congress to strain at a gnat while swallowing a camel.

On the local level, it usually involves something like cars or pickup trucks, about which everyone seems to have an opinion. At the same meeting where the board may have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a major project without batting an eye, members have jumped in to devote hours to debate what type of engine should be specified for a new patrol car or whether a pickup truck should have an automatic or manual transmission.

A similar situation is playing out in Washington, where Sen. Ben Nelson has an important part in bringing together a consensus to apply a modicum of moderation to the stimulus bill, which is creeping closer to $1 trillion than the $750 billion where the package started.

The package, nearly a third of the usual total national budget, deserves the attention.

But meanwhile, the House and Senate found time to delay the conversion to digital television until June 12.

A trillion dollars -- that's a thousand dollars multiplied by a thousand, by another thousand and by another thousand -- is impossible to fathom.

But television? That's something we all understand.

The stimulus package which passed the House and is being debated by the Senate, provides another $650 million for the converter coupon program and advertising.

It's fair that the government help pay consumers for the digital conversion; after all, the government changed the rules to make all the old televisions obsolete.

But the delay will cost television stations a typical $10,000 a month to continue to run an old analog transmitter, or up to an additional $40,000 total due to Congress' new delay.

And, companies like Verizon and AT&T, which plan to use the vacated radio spectrum to establish new higher-speed wireless networks, have to put off those plans until the TV transmitters shut down.

Of the 1,749 full-power stations making the switch, 143 have or soon will shut down analog service, and another 60 plan to make the switch before the original Feb. 17 date.

About 61 percent of all stations are operating on the same channels they will occupy after the transition, but the delay in switching channels can only put off confusion for television viewers.

We doubt a few more months and more dollars will reach the fraction of over-the-air television viewers who have been ignoring the repeated digital transition messages that have been crawling across our screens for months.

With the major economic crisis our nation is facing, delaying the inevitable switch to digital television is a meaningless gesture.

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