The 2009 Digital Television Debacle

[JenyEliza]

Get cable or sat TV and avoid worries.

Why should "We the People" pay for something that has always been available to us for FREE (via all the commercial advertising we STILL have to watch on pay tv, even)?

It's kinda like in Britain, where you have to pay for a LICENSE PER TV. They even have trucks that go around and monitor whether you're operating an unlicensed TV.

Comcast does that here in the apartment complex. The night before Christmas they sat in front of my building for about 2 hours monitoring the upstairs neighbor. About a week later the Feds showed up to arrest the old lady for cable theft. Nice stuff.

Show us in the constitution where you are awarded free TV for life and you would have a point.

Where does the Constitution (capital, as in proper noun, the name of something) provide for REQUIRING We The People to PAY for TV all the sudden?

 

[Againsheila]

Almost a year ago on February 4, 2009, Congress, with the approval and urging of President Obama, passed an act to delay the switch to digital television. The switch was originally scheduled to take place in February 2009, Congress voted to delay the switch by four months, presumably because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had run out of funds for the transition. But documents uncovered by Judicial Watch reveal that the digital television delay could have cost taxpayers an unnecessary $450 million in stimulus funds.

The main reason given for both the delay and the need for additional funds was that FCC couldn't afford to redeem consumer coupons. The coupons, each worth $40, were issued to the public in order to buy the digital convertor boxes necessary for the switch. On January 8, 2009, John Podesta wrote a letter to Congress on behalf of Obama's transition team, asking to delay the switch. Podesta said that the initial $1.5 billion set aside to redeem the coupons had run out, and "over 1 million coupon requests sit on a wait list, unable to be fulfilled." But in order to redeem all the coupons on the wait list, it would have cost only $40 million, not $650 million. Even if, as the Presidential Transition Team estimated, "the number could climb to over 5 million unhonored requests," it still would have required only $200 million to redeem the coupons. So why did Congress give FCC another $450 million in stimulus money?

According to FCC, most of the stimulus money was actually caused by the delay. In FCC's draft of how it would use the funds, it stated that "If congress delays the February 17, 2009 cutoff date...there will be significant expenditures necessary." While $250 million in stimulus funds was reserved to pay for coupon redemption, FCC estimated that "an additional 10 million coupons will be requested during a 90 day delay, and...will require $240 million in additional stimulus support." The additional expenses included:

1. Additional Coupons: $240 million
2. Better Coupon Program Administration: $70 million
3. Field Support: $65 million
4. Paid advertising: $25 million

Obama Administration Caused Delays, Cost Millions: The 2009 Digital Television Transition | Judicial Watch

Doesn't this shit just make your blood boil?

I have no idea why they switched to digital in the first place. We had a much clearer picture with the old fashioned TV antennas. This one breaks up all the time and it's so annoying I don't even watch TV anymore. I just watch hulu or some other shows in our highspeed internet or I wait for them to come out on dvd.

 

[RadiomanATL]

Why should "We the People" pay for something that has always been available to us for FREE (via all the commercial advertising we STILL have to watch on pay tv, even)?

It's kinda like in Britain, where you have to pay for a LICENSE PER TV. They even have trucks that go around and monitor whether you're operating an unlicensed TV.

Comcast does that here in the apartment complex. The night before Christmas they sat in front of my building for about 2 hours monitoring the upstairs neighbor. About a week later the Feds showed up to arrest the old lady for cable theft. Nice stuff.

Show us in the constitution where you are awarded free TV for life and you would have a point.

Where does the Constitution (capital, as in proper noun, the name of something) provide for REQUIRING We The People to PAY for TV all the sudden?

 

[RadiomanATL]

Almost a year ago on February 4, 2009, Congress, with the approval and urging of President Obama, passed an act to delay the switch to digital television. The switch was originally scheduled to take place in February 2009, Congress voted to delay the switch by four months, presumably because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had run out of funds for the transition. But documents uncovered by Judicial Watch reveal that the digital television delay could have cost taxpayers an unnecessary $450 million in stimulus funds.

The main reason given for both the delay and the need for additional funds was that FCC couldn't afford to redeem consumer coupons. The coupons, each worth $40, were issued to the public in order to buy the digital convertor boxes necessary for the switch. On January 8, 2009, John Podesta wrote a letter to Congress on behalf of Obama's transition team, asking to delay the switch. Podesta said that the initial $1.5 billion set aside to redeem the coupons had run out, and "over 1 million coupon requests sit on a wait list, unable to be fulfilled." But in order to redeem all the coupons on the wait list, it would have cost only $40 million, not $650 million. Even if, as the Presidential Transition Team estimated, "the number could climb to over 5 million unhonored requests," it still would have required only $200 million to redeem the coupons. So why did Congress give FCC another $450 million in stimulus money?

According to FCC, most of the stimulus money was actually caused by the delay. In FCC's draft of how it would use the funds, it stated that "If congress delays the February 17, 2009 cutoff date...there will be significant expenditures necessary." While $250 million in stimulus funds was reserved to pay for coupon redemption, FCC estimated that "an additional 10 million coupons will be requested during a 90 day delay, and...will require $240 million in additional stimulus support." The additional expenses included:

1. Additional Coupons: $240 million
2. Better Coupon Program Administration: $70 million
3. Field Support: $65 million
4. Paid advertising: $25 million

Obama Administration Caused Delays, Cost Millions: The 2009 Digital Television Transition | Judicial Watch

Doesn't this shit just make your blood boil?

I have no idea why they switched to digital in the first place.

Bandwidth. A high definition signal sent via analog is about 3-4 times the bandwidth as the same hd picture/sound sent via digital.