In a reversal to Monday's overwhelming vote by the U.S. Senate to delay the switchover from analog to digital television from February 17 to June 12, the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday blocked the delay for the digital transition to occur on the original federally mandated date. House Republicans effectively blocked the proposed delay saying that postponing the changeover would only lead to more confusion on the part of consumers.
President Obama and Democrat backers in Congress have said that a delay was needed as an estimated 5.5 to 6.5 million households were not ready for the digital transition. Studies have found that the most affected families are Hispanics and African-Americans, with Santa Fe and Albuquerque, NM being the two largest metropolitan areas with the most people not ready for the digital changeover, followed by Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, TX.
Texas Republican representative Joe Barton said that the "DTV-transition is neither stuck nor broke," and that problems can be overcome. At the top of the list of problems is the lack of funds for the coupon program that would provide up to $80 per household to go toward the purchase of digital conversion boxes for analog televisions to receive digital signals that are broadcast over the air. Barton and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FLA) introduced a bill that would authorize an additional $250 million for the coupon program without delaying the transition.
It appears that House Democrats are looking to revive the proposed bill sometime next week. This excerpt is from the Washington Post:
The bill was considered in the House yesterday under suspension of the rules, a procedure generally used for noncontroversial items. As a result, the bill saw only a short debate and no amendments were allowed. The vote was 258-168, with most Republicans voting against it. The bill needed a two-thirds majority to pass. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees telecommunications issues, said he wants to bring the same bill back to the floor next week under regular order, meaning that it would need only a simple majority to pass. Given the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, it appears that if the measure is brought back for a regular order vote, it should pass rather easily. Even with the possibility of a delay, television stations are still running informational commercials on the digital transition still touting the February 17 date. The proposed delay is being met with overwhelming opposition from owners and managers of television stations who are spending money to broadcast both analog and digital signals. Also, they say that continued public service commercials educating people on the digital transition will cut into ad revenues. Also looking at the possibility of the delay costing them millions of dollars are the telecommunication corporations that paid $19.6 billion dollars for portions of the analog 700MHz bandwidth that would be used for a variety of new technologies for both the public and private sector. Qualcomm was hoping to soon activate their new MediaFlo technology which would provide real time video and audio content to be broadcast to cell phones, PDA's and personal viewing devices. Qualcomm was planning on beginning to deploy MediaFlo in four metro areas - including Miami and the San Francisco Bay area - sometime in March. Qualcomm reports they could lose up to $550 million dollars in revenue generated by MediaFlo if the proposed delay goes through. One of the reasons the Senate bill delaying the transition passed overwhelmingly was a promise from West Virginia Senator John Rockefeller (D) that he would not seek another extension past the June 12 date. And House Democrats said the delay is needed to make use of a proposed $650 million stimulus package to fund the coupon program and call centers to assist customers during the transition. Although I'm not directly affected by the digital transition, I think it's time to throw the switch and go digital. Even a four month delay will not help the true stragglers get ready for the transition. You literally have to be living in a cave to have not known about the February 17 changeover date, and there's a good chance that the person who doesn't know about the February 17 deadline probably doesn't own a television. Plus, I've been a big proponent of the future technology that would bring real time media to personal electronics and I really want to see that happen sooner and not later.
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