According to an article in today's Washington Post, last night the Democratic-controlled Senate passed an Obama-backed proposal to delay the digital television (DTV) transition from the slated date of February 17th to June 12th, giving consumers more time to obtain the equipment necessary to receive the new digital TV broadcasts.  The bill still needs to be approved by the House of Representatives in order to become law.  Of course, how the broadcasters will pay for this extended transition is not yet clear.  PBS chief executive Paula Kerger stated yesterday that the delay would cost public broadcasters $22 million.  Will taxpayers have to pony up to cover that? 

The main issue is that many American TV viewers will not be ready in time for the February transition and their TV sets will go dark (OK, actually, probably more like "snowy") as the analog broadcasts go offline.  According to a recent Nielsen survey, as many as 6.5 million households - approximately 5.7% of U.S. homes - are still not ready for the switch.  And while this is a big  improvement over the 7.8 million figure reported by Nielsen last month, it's still too large a gap to be closed in the few short weeks leading up to the original cut-off date. 

Compounding the problem is the fact that the TV Converter Box Coupon program - the federal program that doles out up to two $40 coupons to each household in order to offset the cost of a digital converter box - has run out of coupons, with approximately 2 million people already on a waiting list.  Many of the originally issued coupons have expired unused or will be expiring soon so only by waiting it out will they know how much of the allocated $1.34 Billion still may be available for new coupons. 

Those who already own digital TVs (TVs with an "ATSC tuner" built in) will be unaffected by this transition as will those who get their TV from cable or satellite services.  But for those who rely on rabbit ears or roof antennas to watch TV on older analog sets (of which there are a high percentage of elderly, poor and minority households), the digital transition will mean lights-out for their TV viewing.

Hey, I've got a question.  When did watching TV become such an essential part of our lives that the federal government feels compelled to subsidize it?  I know they're only trying to do "what's best for us" and to ease the transition for the economically-disadvantaged.  And these efforts I applaud.  Those who want to watch TV should not be restricted from doing so due to financial hardship. 

But what if we were all forced to stop watching TV?  Maybe we'd have to resort to doing something drastic like:

• visiting our neighbors (to do something other than "watch the game")
• reading a book
• going for a walk, a bike ride, a run, or a swim
• going to the movies
• sitting down as a family to a nice leisurely dinner... at an actual table 
• playing cards, chess, checkers or a board game

Don't get me wrong.  I'm a fan of television (well, some television) particularly when it's shown on a nice big high definition screen with a fabulous surround sound system, but all this fuss over the idea that people might not be able to watch TV for a while makes we wonder whether we, as a society, have our priorities in order.

UPDATE (1/28/09): Not so fast! The House voted and Republicans effectively blocked the measure by failing to reach the 2/3 majority required to pass it.  So as of this moment, we're back on track for a February 17th analog cut-off.  We shall see if anything more comes of this in the coming days and weeks. 

UPDATE (2/11/09): After a follow-up House vote, and then, finally President Obama's signature on February 11th, the DTV Delay bill was made law.  This means TV stations are allowed to keep their analog broadcasts online until June 12th, and a few hundred million more dollars will be allocated to DTV converter box coupons.  But stations are not specifically required to keep analog broadcasts online after February 17th so expect a messy and confusing transition as analog broadcasts slowly and sloppily go offline across the country until their life support plug is finally yanked on June 12th.