Senate Oks digital TV delay
Modern achievements in the domain of digitized television have changed the concept of television broadcast. After being used for decades, analogue television broadcast was sentenced to be upgraded to digital television broadcast that brings a big improvement to televised channels with better picture quality and signal.
The republicans of the U.S. Senate blocked a bill that was issued to delay the transformation of national televised broadcast from analogue to digital after being scheduled to 17 February. After a compromise between the Senate’s republicans and democrats was reached, the so-called DTV Delay Act was brought back to the Senate floor. The Act rescheduled the analogue to digital switch bill to be active before the June 12 deadline if they are ready. The bill would allow the television stations to switch to digital signals leaving the vacated spectrum to be used for public safety services. The reason behind the delay was the concern for the 6 million television viewers that are technically unprepared for the transition in February. This fact left President Barack Obama as well as many legislators with the only option of supporting the extending of the deadline. The author of the bill and Senate commerce committee chairman John Rockefeller stated that “delaying the transition is the right thing to do since the nation is not ready to make this transition in February”. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson was also in favor of the delay and thought of it as a fast decision. Other than the Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives must also pass the bill in its own version. The commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman has scheduled a committee vote on his own legislation, on Tuesday, that would delay the digital transition as well.
To ease up the transition, a coupon program was made to help the 6 million people buy the digital converter that they need. With this large number of people, the $1.35 billion program was initiated to subsidize the cost of the converter boxes but ran out of money as of earlier this month. The bankruptcy of the program left about 2.5 million people on the waiting list for the 40$ coupons to buy the converters. With prices ranging from 40$ to 80$, the digital converters are considered necessary for some viewers with older television sets so that their televisions can continue to work after the transition.
Although the delay is considered a victory for the consumer and analogue television owners, but it has a bad impact on the broadcasters as well as Telecommunication firms that were eager to fill the new vacated spectrum space. Rockefeller’s bill of the delay could cost the broadcasters millions but gave them an option of hurrying up the deadline if they become ready.
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