The news that President-elect Barack Obama’s team wants to delay the Feb. 17 transition to digital TV surely came as a shock to advocates like me, who have been writing about the switch for a year now. The truth is that the switchover has been in the works for years and has often been delayed. Finally, after all of those stop and starts, the Feb. 17 date was set and the word has definitely gotten out. You can’t turn on your TV without seeing a PSA for the impending switch and what to do about it, no matter your income level. While it’s true that the government has run out of money to fund the vouchers for affected viewers to buy converter boxes, the action that needs to be taken is to re-fund the program — as Congress has done in the past when it’s run out — not delay the switch. What will happen if the switch is postponed? The affected people who have procrastinated to this point will simply put off taking action again. This has little to do with income levels and everything to do with inaction. Until the switch actually happens, people who have put off preparing for it won’t be prompted to do anything. After all, if they had done something in the year since the switch has been heavily publicized, we would have known before now that the coupon program was running low.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 3:21 pm and is filed under DTV switchover. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.