Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Opinion

When Will Analog TVs Go Dark?

By

The first commentary I ever wrote for this website was on what I called ?the DTV heist.? That was my characterization of the broadcast television industry holding onto its analog spectrum while occupying a fat new slice of the digital spectrum. Well, the end may finally be in sight for analog broadcasting. Maybe.

Because the planned analog-spectrum auction would bring in big bucks, the analog cutoff is moving through Congress as part of the budget package. The Senate recently voted 52-47 to approve legislation that would set a deadline of April 7, 2009 for the final transition from analog to digital TV broadcasting. One comic sidelight is that the senators were so worried about basketball fans missing the March Madness that they moved the analog cutoff from the year-end dates usually bandied about to just after the end of the college hoops tournament.

Of course, just because the Senate approves a bill, that doesn?t necessarily mean it?ll clear both houses and be signed by the president. The House Energy Commerce Committee has approved, by 33-17, an alternate bill that would set a deadline of December 31, 2008.

Related

You can bet that both houses of Congress will hotly debate the analog cutoff when it comes up for a floor vote. If this isn?t a red-flag issue, nothing is. Imagine the pandemonium that will break out when Congress tells the American public that the vast majority of their TVs are about to become obsolete.

Interest groups will get in on the action. First of all, there are the broadcasters themselves. Once in awhile they get behind a specific date for giving up their analog spectrum but later they always conveniently forget about it. They originally promised to give it up on December 31st, 2006. That date was confirmed by loophole-ridden legislation in 1996 and has been ignored ever since.

These guys don?t want to vacate their analog spectrum in 2008 or 2009 or ever. They dread the prospect of losing even a small percentage of their viewers in the shuffle. And whether poor folks will ante up for new sets is only one of their worries.

Another one is that analog and digital broadcasting have different dispersion patterns. Analog degrades as the signal weakens, while digital usually looks great right up to the point where it fails altogether. In fairness, it?s hard to blame the broadcasters for fretting about that, though I enjoy getting my stiletto into them anyway as payback for the garbage they shovel over the public airwaves.

Then there are the consumer and public interest groups. Normally I regard these people as my natural allies but I don?t think they?re up to speed on digital broadcasting. One egregious example is Commercial Alert, which in late 2004 fired off a letter to Congress castigating the Federal Communications Commission for promoting the DTV transition. Expect these people and their blood brothers to run around the room in circles screaming ?your TV is going dark! Your TV is going dark! Your TV is going dark!?

What will happen to analog TVs is a legitimate issue. It cries out for solutions, not sensationalism. What has to happen is that set-top boxes must be provided to convert the new digital signals to the old analog format so that no one is forced to buy a new TV unless they want a better picture. The Senate committee-approved bill provides $3 billion to assist low-income viewers. The House bill allows only $990 million. Since the sale of the analog spectrum will bring in billions of dollars, Congress will have some money to play with, so while set-top box subsidies are not a done deal at this stage, they are a distinct possibility.

How much the spectrum auction will bring in is uncertain. Estimates have run as high as $70 billion though more recent numbers run as low as $10 billion. I find it interesting that the amount has suddenly shrunk now that the auctions are a few scant years away from happening. I?m sure it has nothing to do with sweetheart deals between our incorruptible government and the corporations eyeing the spectrum.

Another issue is spectrum for emergency responders?your local police, fire department, etc. Sen. John McCain has made numerous efforts in this legislative season and past ones to expedite the transition so that our heroes will not have communications problems when terrorists attack or a hurricane rips up a state or two. The Senate commerce committee rejected his latest attempt by a vote of 5-17. However, in the bill that went to the Senate floor, the committee did provide $1.25 billion for emergency communications and a national alert system.

Does the fate of the analog airwaves really matter much any more? After all, the majority of us now get our television from cable or satellite. The original DTV-transition plan called for the end of analog broadcasting only after 85 percent of the current audience in a given market is reached by digital signals. Arguably, most of us are there already. But 15 percent of the viewing public is still a big chunk?more than big enough to swing an election?so our politicians will tread warily. Do you think your great-aunt in the boonies wants to hook up a set-top box to her TV? How about all those bedroom sets your kids are watching that are still fed by antennas?

What do you think, folks? Are you a gung-ho HDTV viewer who couldn?t care less about an analog television broadcast system invented in the 1940s? Or does the prospect of your analog TV going dark?or being forced to acquire a set-top companion?really alarm you? I?m as interested in what you think as your elected officials are. Well, almost as interested.

___________________________________________________

Mark Fleischmann is the audio editor of Home Theater and the author of Practical Home Theater (http://www.quietriverpress.com/).

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Fine, I’ll call the Mach-E a Mustang. But that giant screen has to go
Mustang Mach-E

At age 17, I seriously contemplated stuffing a computer into my Pontiac Grand Prix. I was a geek, all my pirated Deftones MP3s lived on a hard drive, and it seemed infinitely cooler than a CD changer. But I could never quite figure out how to make it look right. Sure, I could hide the guts in the trunk, but where would I put the screen? Just zip tie a touchscreen on the dash? Wouldn’t that look obnoxious? Even as a high-schooler in the era of AutoZone tape-on neon lights, this type of modification just seemed sloppy.

I scrapped my plan altogether. But 15 years later, it turns out my worries were ill-founded. As modern car designers have demonstrated, you can shove a gigantic screen just about anywhere.

Read more
The Pixelbook Go is another spinoff, but I’m still waiting for a true sequel
Google Pixelbook Go keyboard

The Pixelbook Go is the newest Chromebook by Google, and it's meant to be a cheaper alternative to the original Pixelbook. That's all fine and well. As a budget laptop, it looks like a great option for a student.

But the Pixelbook is now two years old, and it needs a true sequel -- not another spinoff.

Read more
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance makes CGI, puppetry a winning combo
dark crystal age of resistance cgi puppetry unit 326 tif

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance | Teaser | Netflix

Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal was a one-of-a-kind project when it hit theaters in 1982, offering a sprawling, fantastic adventure that blurred the line between the family-friendly fare his name was synonymous with and darker, more adult themes. What made it truly unique, however, was that its story was told with a cast composed entirely of puppet characters -- something unusual (to say the least) for a mainstream theatrical release, and even more so for a film aimed at older audiences.

Read more