Imagine if our country had to solve something as complicated as a financial crisis! We can’t even manage to get everyone a TV signal without it becoming a political brouhaha. So what do you make of the fact that the Senate voted to postpone the cutover to a digital television signal until June, followed by a stonewalling House of Representatives that voted to keep the February deadline? America is staring at the TV wondering what they’ll be watching, how, and when.
First understand how we got here. The idea of switching to a digital signal was more than just a chance to modernize our infrastructure. The government’s upside was to make money by selling off parts of the old analog spectrum.

Second, to make it equitable for those who couldn’t afford or wouldn’t buy a DTV to accommodate the switchover, the government offered a coupon worth $40. You sign up for the coupon, wait six to eight weeks for it to arrive, and then use your coupon at certain stores to buy a converter box. The converter box allows your analog TV to accept a digital signal. (Converter boxes cost about $80-$100.)

The takeaway: The government needs to make this happen because it’s both revenue generating and forward thinking. The broadcast spectrum, in addition to making money as it’s sold, will also help modernize our national alert systems.

The FCC is charge of administering the transition and it is not going particularly well. Original estimates of how many households would request coupons were wildly off. Now there are something like 6.5 million asking for coupons and there’s not enough money in the government budget to subsidize the project.

What kind of organization doles out free coupons without having some clue as to how many coupons it would need and at what cost? Any student of human nature knows that we are a nation of coupon clippers and deal scavengers. So when the government offers you a free “anything” you take it. My guess is that a good portion of the households that requested coupons (worth $40 each) were doing it for “a second home” or a third TV. It’s also human nature that only a small fraction of the people that ask for coupons for anything wind up actually using them. Every packaged goods company understands and plans for this.

As we wait for the final shoe to drop, consider the digital TV transition just one more mission not quite accomplished.

To stay up to date on the DTV transition shenanigans follow www.dtv.org.