Andrew Clem home
Andrew Clem banner

Blog post


Monthly archives
(all categories)


February 7, 2009 [LINK / comment]

Digital deadline? Never mind!

For well over a year, the American public has been bombarded with TV advertisements warning them to get ready for the transition to digital television by February 17, 2009. Well, some people have just not been paying attention, it seems, and the government ran short of money for the digital converter coupon program. (George Will dubbed that the "No Couch Potato Left Behind Act." smile) In any event, Congress has tried to alleviate the confusion by extending the deadline for another four months. The Washington Post reports:

Additional money for the coupon program is included in the stimulus package making its way through Congress. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communication, Technology and the Internet, said yesterday that the funds would not be available for several weeks.

One results of this is that local TV stations will have to keep both analog and digital signals on the air, wasting costly electricity at a time when everyone is talking about saving energy! It's a classic example of an "unfunded mandate." Ironically, the net effect of this deadline extension will be to create even more confusion. And so, I have modified the "countdown clock" on the Science & Technology blog page, and further modifications may become necessary in the future.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 07 Feb 2009, 3: 23 PM

(unformatted URL)
      .



This post is over a week old, so comments are closed.


© Andrew G. Clem. All rights reserved. Your use of this material signifies your acceptance of the Terms of use.


Hits on this page (single blog post) since July 2, 2007:

Category archives:
(all years)



This (or that) year's
blog highlights

Blog highlights have been compiled for the years 2010-2012 thus far, and eventually will be compiled for earlier years, back to 2002.


Explanation

The "home made" blog organization system that I created was instituted on November 1, 2004, followed by several functional enhancements in subsequent years. I make no more than one blog post per day on any one category, so some posts may cover multiple news items or issues. Blog posts appear in the following (reverse alphabetical) order, which may differ from the chronological order in which the posts were originally made:

  1. Wild birds (LAST)
  2. War
  3. Science & Technology
  4. Politics
  5. Latin America
  6. Culture & Travel
  7. Canaries ("Home birds")
  8. Baseball (FIRST)