DTV Confusion: How My Date Stood Me Up

On the eve of what had long been recognized as the end of analog television (February 17, 2009), I'm contemplating how on January 26th, the Senate passed a bill delaying the switch to digital television to June 12. Despite this, all but two of my local stations are shutting off their analog signals at midnight. Only my local PBS station willingly chose to continue broadcasting analog signals until June; my local CBS affiliate is hanging on because of reported digital broadcast interference from the continued PBS analog broadcasts. As the saying goes, if you have cable or satellite service, nothing will change. But what's the deal with this transition?

The argument I've been hearing lately is that since 9/11, emergency services have had a need for more communications radio bands. There's also the increasing needs of Internet junkies who insist that they must have access the World Wide Web through their cell phones; that takes broadcast signals too. So obviously the need comes from that, right? Balderdash!

When I was a student of broadcasting in 1997, the FCC was already laying the groundwork for digital broadcast television. The discussion had begun 10 years earlier, in 1987 with the standards pretty well decided by 1996. The FCC's Fourth Report and Order gave the following reasons for the move to "DTV":

"(33) ...to promote the smooth introduction of a free and universally available digital broadcast television service."

"(38) ...adopting the DTV Standard will increase the availability of new products and services for consumers ... [expecting that 'DTV' will be used] to transmit, for example, newspapers, stock market or sports data and, perhaps of greatest significance, software applications directly to computing devices."

"(39) ...incorporating the DTV Standard ... will encourage technological innovation and competition [through diversity of new] video formats [resulting] in greater choice and diversity of equipment, [resulting] in greater consumer benefits...."

"(42) ...[by] adopting this Standard provides for the minimum of regulation needed to provide for a smooth transition...."⁽¹⁾

Here's how those same points turned out:

(33) The promotion of free and universally available digital TV has been minimal. I've seen a lot of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) but haven't been sure that the government understood who would be benefitting from their grand plan when nearly 83% of Americans with TVs have either cable or satellite service.

(38) This was written before broadband Internet existed. At the time, dial-up was new and its bandwidth was limited to prevent hackers from controlling U.S. nuclear weapons. What other alternative could there be for faster, better downloading than through broadcasting? However the process has taken so long, that the government plan was outpaced by the private tech industry.

(39) If by "new technological innovation" the authors meant the death of recording TV with your VCR and wasting money on HD DVDs and HD DVD equipment, then it worked. There seems to be less choice in products, and I'm not sure consumers have "benefited" from the results.

(42) The transition has been anything but smooth. Since the initial agreement in 1996, the analog shut off date has been pushed back to December 31, 2003, for commercial stations and December 31, 2004 for non-commercial broadcasters; then February 17, 2009; and most recently, June 12, 2009. Pushing the date back to give people more time without providing any real help with the transition hasn't solved anything.

The research firm MRI says that about 17.7% of Americans live in households with only over-the-air TV. The National Association of Broadcasters and analysts at the Nielsen Co. state that while most of those viewers are ready for the analog shutdown, more than 5.8 million U.S. households, or 5.1% of all homes, are not ready. Let me help you with the math...NEARLY 1/3 OF ALL ANTENNA USERS AREN'T READY!

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), antenna-only television viewers are more likely to be:

• poor
  
• have lower "English literacy" (this includes those who do not speak English as well as the English-speaking illiterate)
  
• rural Americans
  
• disabled
  
• senior citizens⁽²⁾

Let's compare this to those who are less likely to have Internet access:

• poor
• women
• blacks and Hispanics
• rural Americans
• senior citizens⁽³⁾
  

Let's compare this list to those who are less likely to have access to telephones:

• poor
• women and children
• blacks and Hispanics
• rural Americans⁽⁴⁾

So if you're having trouble with your TV converter box after the analog shut off date, you can go online to www.DTV2009.gov or call 1-888-DTV-2009. Of course, as I've demonstrated, if you need a converter box, there's a good chance that you don't have access to either the Internet or a telephone. Then what do you do?

The truly sad thing about all of this is that once upon a time, digital broadcast television was supposed to bring greater access to more information, not just a better picture. However, the goal has shifted away from free access for all Americans to an unintentional widening of the digital divide. How many of those 5.8 million Americans who soon won't have television also don't have Internet access or even a telephone? What does it say about the voting public, the FCC, and Congress when we all allow the less fortunate to fall even farther behind? One person's road to hell is certainly paved with the good intentions of others.

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1) FCC Fourth Report and Order - http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Orders/1996/fcc96493.txt

2) NTIA Consumer Education Plan - http://www.ntia.doc.gov/dtvcoupon/DTV_ConsumerEducation_120607.pdf

3) Pew Internet: Who's Not Online - http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/8/press_release.asp

4) Schement, J.R. 1995. "Beyond universal service - Characteristics of Americans without telephones, 1980-1993." Telecommunications Policy 19(6):477-485