Ursus Pacificus

The FCC has set February 17, 2009 as the End Times for analog television broadcasts.

This is important how?

I mean, unless you’re in the 20% of the US population not currently getting your TV signal via cable or satellite, this is a complete non-issue. If you are in that 20%, TV is obviously not that important to you.

Me? I don’t care. Apart from staying in hotel rooms (like when I was on my Vision Quest, or while traveling for work), I haven’t really “watched TV” since November of 2002. Yes, I have watched programming originally produced for TV (for example, I enjoy The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, but I watch them on-line, commercial-free, and at my convenience, and I have several TV series on DVD), but the “water-cooler” factor doesn’t enter into my thought process. I gave it up, and I’m much happier for it.

I would love for someone to explain to me why the transition is important; that is, why it is important to flip over from analog to digital broadcasting. Is it to force people to buy new TVs? Is it to keep foreigners from intercepting and watching our programs? Is it to make it harder for ordinary people to do interesting things with TV signals? Is it to auction off an enormous and extremely valuable part of the publicly-owned RF spectrum to the highest low-ball bidder, for them to exploit for profit? What? Please tell me!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 1:32 am and is filed under Technotrike, The Op/Ed Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.