Our Government ‘Working’ For Us

One thing is for certain, the government is never as efficient as it should be. It seems the best we can hope for is an occasional acknowledgement that it can, and should, be doing better for the citizens.

So it is with the FCC’s mandated transition to digital television. The moving of the date was a very good idea, because it gave one last shove to those who had done nothing to get ready for the coming disruption of service changeover.

Reported in Ars Technica, the FCC is still almost certain that the transition will not go swimmingly. This is due, no doubt, to the inertia of many citizens, but also due to the lack of proper preparedness of the government, and its use of an inferior system, fraught with problems (these have been widely documented, and touched on many times here in these pages, so I’ll refrain from the dead horse abuse).

from Ars

Interim Federal Communications Commission chair Michael Copps donned his Grim Realist hat and told Congress on Thursday that even with the deadline extended to June 12, the DTV switch won’t be smooth.

“Some may say that we won’t be ready on June 12 either, and that there will still be consumers left behind. And that is true—this transition will not be seamless,” a decidedly grinchy Copps warned the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s tech subcommittee, chaired by Rick Boucher (D-VA). “The hard truth is that we won’t be able to make up for the inadequate policies of the past few years in just a few short months.”

Representative Boucher has centered on the point. While the Bush administration was counting the money to be made by once again re-selling the airwaves, the FCC was busy doing nothing to alleviate the problems with the system chosen for transmission. It cannot get much right, it seems, as the FCC website shows that I should be watching television stations from San Diego, when in fact, I can only occasionally get them, very weakly, during ’skip’ conditions. This is hardly the way to watch television, and also is not the way the local terrain allows reception. This is not my house as a microcosm of the universe – all people in the surrounding areas are in this way affected, and we watch television stations from Los Angeles, not San Diego. I sent a letter to the FCC, back in February, and today checked the progress. It has changed nothing.

With this kind of snappy service, it is no wonder that Director Copps has such low hopes for the June 12 deadline.

Plus, “there will be consumer disruption—count on it,” he predicted. Of course, one might ask Copps where he was when all these inadequate policies were being implemented. The answer, he would doubtless reply, is that he’s been saying for years that the FCC had no real coordinated plan for the analog-to-digital switch. The FCC’s temporary boss reminded the House subcommittee of this in his own testimony.

“To be fair,” Copps conceded, “I think the FCC and others did begin to act with more urgency starting in the middle of 2008, largely in response to Congressional oversight.” But let’s not give too much credit here. “By then it was obviously too little, too late,” he added. “The late start led to a rushed effort with little room for strategic thinking or for anticipating and fixing problems that arose.” All that was the premise for the DTV Delay Act, which put off the last day of analog broadcasting for full power TV stations until this summer.

The Congress has been asleep at the wheel through this entire screwed up mess. I can remember having customers come in to my store in the 2000–2002 time frame, after buying HDTVs from another store (Radio Shack was not an early adopter of anything like this, which was a good idea, but nothing changed), then buying a UHF antenna, the best cable, and a large sturdy mast, only to find that the service was interrupted many times, for no apparent reason. Many times it happened to coincide with street traffic or an airplane overhead. This led to many customers complaining about the quality of the antennas, but I simply reminded them how well the antennas worked with the analog UHF stations, and that digital reception required no different style of antenna.. It does seem amazing that those hardy few early adopters did not have among them, any letter writers, who could compose a letter to the FCC, pointing out the flaws in the system. Perhaps they simply gave up, as I also sold many of the same people DirecTV.

But on the bright side

On the other hand, the US seems to be making considerable progress in the transition, which was evident from Copps’ own remarks. If you count the 629 stations that pulled the analog plug on or around DTV Day v1.0 (February 17), he noted, include the 160 that plan to make the switch sometime between February 18 and June 12, and add 21 stations that broadcast digital from the get-go, then 810 signals have or will make the jump prior to June 12. That’s a little over 45 percent of the total number of licenses involved in this trek: 1,787. About one-third of full-power stations are completely transitioned right now.

Yes, the number of anecdotal stories about the hilarity that ensued when these transitions took place are now the stuff of legend. Television viewing with people being banished from another room, due to their bodies causing interference, or antennas placed in positions previously used only by flying insects are well documented.

Of course, let’s not get too happy about this. “Most viewers still have the transition ahead of them,” Copps warned. Many of those 810 licenses broadcast to smaller markets, he noted. Only 15 percent of Americans have seen two or more network affiliates go digital in their area, and only a tiny portion of viewers live in markets where the digital switch is a completely done deal.

Still, Nielsen ratings now says that a mere 3.9 percent of all US households are completely unready for the transition. And the National Association of Broadcasters contests even that number—saying it might be lower because Nielsen counts as unready households that have, in fact, bought converter boxes but haven’t gotten around to installing them yet.

And the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is now sending out those analog converter set-top box discount coupons again, thanks to the White House’s stimulus package, which replenished the NTIA’s coupon budget to the tune of $650 million. The waiting list for coupons has been cleared, the agency announced on Tuesday. Most of that money will go to the release of over 12 million coupons, new NTIA chief Anna Gomez told the subcommittee. The rest will go to consumer education and distribution costs.

The NTIA is even redeeming expired coupons now. So if you used one to buy a converter, but didn’t do anything with the other, go get it out of your desk drawer (if you kept it around). It’s good again. And contrary to earlier predictions, a Wal-Mart executive who testified at the hearing seemed pretty optimistic about keeping his stores full of relevant product, including new antennas. “I fully expect that as the weeks progress we will be very well-situated to serve anticipated demand of our customers who need converter boxes through the end of June,” Wal-Mart senior Vice President Gary Severson told the representatives.

Yes, Wal-mart executives definitely have their fingers on the pulse of high tech America.

Samaritans needed

On Thursday the FCC also solicited ideas for setting up more DTV transition assistance programs across the United States. The agency wants proposals “that focus on providing assistance to low-income individuals, minority communities, non-English speaking consumers, senior citizens, consumers living in rural areas or on tribal lands, and consumers with disabilities.” The Commission appears particularly interested in ideas to help folks in Nielsen Designated Market Areas that seem most at risk. The top five are Albuquerque-Santa Fe, Anchorage, Atlanta, Boise, and Boston.

Of course, if they aren’t in Nielsen markets, screw ‘em.

The FCC also says that over the next few days it’s going to open up an application process for setting up in-home assistance and DTV walk-in help centers. And Copps told the subcommittee that the agency is working out a deal to partner with Americorps to set up a trial run test center in Denver, with yet another arrangement pending with the International Association of Fire Chiefs to organize community call assistance across the country.

Walk-in help centers?  Now that is a situation where hilarity will definitely ensue, right before the shooting starts.

Speaking at the hearing, Rep. Boucher called all this “a major improvement,” although “much remains to be done to enable the preparation of the currently unprepared homes.” Sure thing, but maybe we’ll muddle though this crazy business after all.

Yes, one thing is for sure, Americans are good at muddling through. No sense in stopping now. It reminds me of an old joke about the age of the Marine Corps – and no matter what the number of years, not a day ever marred by progress.

So it is with our own FCC. A model of mediocrity you can count on.

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