Despite Delay for DTV, FCC Concerns Remain.

[elleng]

Source: WaPo

Shortage of Converter Boxes Predicted.

'A day after Congress delayed the nation's transition to all-digital broadcasts, the Federal Communications Commission is grappling with how it will handle calls from confused consumers, broadcasters who want to move ahead early and the possibility that millions of Americans still could be left behind.

"While the law gives us a limited amount of additional time, it presents significant challenges given the longstanding problems that have already existed," FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein said during a meeting to discuss how to handle the delay.'>





Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020503188.html?hpid=sec-tech

[northernlights]

1. Guess I missed something...

I seem to remember the press smugly handing Obama his first "loss" on the delay. Then saw an ad for the new date while watching the news this morning.

I'm surprised at broadcasters that want to go early. Do they really want to leave a big chunk of their audience behind? To be honest, all their stoopid commercials really pissed me off. Also the incredibly condescending program PBS put together on how to plug in a box. Screw'em all. They still think they're the center of the universe. They truly don't get it.

[onenote]

2. broadcasters will go off early because its expensive to run dual transmissions

Very expensive. So they'll take the risk of leaving behind a small percentage of their audience in order to save tens of thousands of dollars a month in electrical costs.

In other cases, stations will terminate analog service early because they basically have no choice. With the deadline previously expected to be Feb 17, a number of brodcasters will no longer have leases on the towers that are used for their analog transmissions.

Oh, and all those stupid commercials -- for the most part, they were required by rules adopted by the FCC. And you're going to see a lot more commercials about the transition in the next few weeks from stations that are going to terminate on Feb 17 -- the FCC is requiring them to run 120 commercials between now and the 17th and well as, during the Feb 10-17 period, five minute crawls every hour (expanding to ten minute crawls every hour the last two days).

[guitar man]

3. the reason we want to go early

is because the cost of running two transmitters side by side is killing us, has been all along. There is no profitability in running them any more and the sooner we can shut them down, the sooner we can attempt to climb up out of the red and into the black.