DTV Transition Delayed Until June 12; Nation Again Decides That “No Consequences” Is the Best Teaching Tool

(www.sass-pants.com) — According to TV survey company Nielsen, more than 6.5 million Americans still aren’t ready for the DTV transition originally scheduled to happen on February 17, 2009. As a result, 6% of Americans will see their televisions go dark when analog broadcasts cease. (source) And so, the DTV transition is being pushed back until June 12, 2009.

The reason for this absolutely baffles me. How long have we been watching these annoying DTV announcements telling us to get our $40 coupon toward our digital converter box so we don’t get left behind in February? How much hand-holding do people need?

So, rather than carry through with what they’ve been talking about for months on every network at all hours of the day, the government has decided to push back the change to all-digital broadcasts simply because 6% of American households can’t get their collective act together and manage to handle what the other 94% of us have done. And by all reports, they probably won’t do it anyway.

Even after a delay, it’s unlikely that all U.S. residents will be ready for a transition, Republicans said. It’s difficult to get more than 95 percent of people to do anything, said Representative Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican. (source)

What’s the point of waiting? Why are we catering to the lowest common denominator here: ie, the people who failed to act on the explicit instructions and extreme advance notice they have received every time they turned on the idiot box over the last year? Why not just stick with the plan and let them either get on board or deal with, gasp, not watching television until they do?

TV is not necessary for life. It’s not like food or shelter or water or heat in the winter time. Television is a luxury.

And maybe that’s the problem. It seems that here in the US, we have begun to regard luxuries as necessities. Owning a car, owning a home, eating out, having disposable income — these are all luxuries. Being entertained at all times is a luxury. And having television in your home is a luxury.

There’s a big disconnect between Obama’s telling Americans that we need to buckle down and be grown-ups and take responsibility and then turning around and saying, “Oh, poor babies! You won’t have TV because you couldn’t follow a set of simple instructions to preserve your access to the form of entertainment to which you are so deeply addicted. Let me make it easier for you to not face the consequences of your choices by extending the deadline unnecessarily and inflicting unforeseen cost on all of the broadcasters who were ready to roll based on what we required of them.”

Dude, seriously?

President Obama, aren’t you the guy who said: “Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age”? Didn’t you also say: “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task”?

This does not bode well as the opening of our new “era of responsibility.” It doesn’t bode well at all.

Contents Copyright © 2009 Kristen King

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