Inouye Wants DTV Battle Plan
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 10/16/2007 2:56:00 AM MT
Washington – Senate Commerce Committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) Tuesday called on the Bush administration to create a federal task force with the goal of ensuring that the transition to all-digital broadcast TV in early 2009 occurs with minimal consumer disruption.
“To ensure success, we must draw up a battle plan,” said Inouye, writing in the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill.
The task force, Inouye said, should be lead by the Federal Communications Commission and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Together, they would “determine how best to marshal existing resources across the federal government and advise Congress as to what additional measures may be necessary to ensure a smooth transition.”
A similar task force, Inouye said, successfully supervised the federal government’s oversight of the so-called Y2K problem, which threatened to crash millions of personal computers when software programs designed to record years up to “99” suddenly had to deal with four-digit dates like “2000" at the dawn of a new century.
Under federal law, every full-power TV station has to stop transmitting video in analog format on Feb. 17, 2009. An estimated 65 to 70 million TV sets could go dark if not connected to cable, satellite or an over-the-air digital-to-analog converter box when analog signals go away.
About 15 million to 20 million homes rely exclusively on free, over-the-air broadcasting, probably meaning that the vast majority of TV sets in those homes are analog-only. The FCC is hoping to learn the number of broadcast-only homes that have purchased digital TV sets in recent years.
NTIA has legal responsibility for running a $1.5 billion program to hand out converter box coupons worth $40 each to the public. Inouye is concerned the program is behind schedule.
“The NTIA program is plagued by uncertainties. It is not clear which boxes have been certified and which retailers will stock them on their shelves,” Inouye said, adding that the problems he identified had to be solved soon because coupons become available on Jan 1, 2008.
LG Electronics has promised to build converter boxes and Radio Shack has promised to stock them. Other manufacturers and retail giants are expected to participate, NTIA has said.
Alerting the public about the DTV transition is going to involve messages tailored to national and local concerns, Inouye said.
“What works in Houston may not work in Honolulu,” Inouye said. “We need the equivalent of DTV `block captains’ ready, willing, and able in every media market in this country.”
