Digital Delay

I’ve been reading about the plan to delay the digital television delay by four months, from February 17 to June 12. We already know that the transition is likely going to be rough. Despite the best efforts of the industry to get the word out Nielsen estimates 6.5 million people aren’t ready and the government program offering discounted converter boxes is out of money. Even so, delaying the transition is a bad idea.

I hope the already tight 2009 budgets of local stations are not based on powering only one transmitter after February 17. I can’t imagine that running a 100 kilowatt analog transmitter is very cheap. Since digital transmitters tend to be in the 100 kilowatt range, I’d imagine that broadcasters would be eager to lower the electricity bill at least a little.

Over the last year, broadcasters have been making a huge investment of airtime and effort to educate people about the transition. Segments during the news, booths at community events, call centers, promos during shows, frequent tests, and just about everything short of actually turning the analog signal off has been tried. Four months of the same isn’t going to make a huge dent in the numbers of the unconverted. It’s just going to make us look bad. Every time the deadline approaches, congress extends the deadline. The original deadline was December 31, 2006. All the eggs are already in the February 17 basket. Nielsen actually moved back February sweeps into march to accommodate the transition.  Let’s pick a date and stick with it.