This article appeared in the Lockport Union, Sun & Journal on February 7th, 2009 in their Cheers and Jeers column on the editorial page. It appears to be contributions from their editorial staff, but no specific editor was credited.
While I certainly agree with the writer’s conclusion that the delay to the DTV switch is unnecessary, the article illustrates how people are not only confused enough on their own, they have the media to thank for it.
The flaw in the article comes when it says “If they miss MSNBC for a few days, the world will not end.“
The problem is, people who watch MSNBC are already on cable or satellite service and are unaffected by the DTV switchover. The people who will be affected by it, watching conventional, terrestrial, analog, “TV-antenna-on-the-roof-or-rabbit-ears-on-the-set” television don’t get MSNBC! MSNBC is not available over-the-air.
How many people with cable will run out and buy a converter box because this article made them afraid of losing MSNBC? Probably not many, because most of them have been confused by the media hype and the crawlers on the TV stations, that they’re immune to it by now. That’s why they delay is unnecessary.
The only reason to delay the switch is so that maybe by then the media will get the details straight and properly inform people instead of scaring them.
This post was cited today (2/12) on WECK Radio during the Reason talk-show by Scott Leffler, a good friend of mine.
He posted a link to this video on his blog:
To confound things, at least two of our local TV stations announced that they are converting on Feb. 17 come hell or high water. They did set up a hotline to help people figure out how to hook up the converter boxes. Just another thing for people to worry about that only affects a few.
Yeah, at least one local station (WUTV) has decided not to wait and is dropping analog Feb. 17th.
A lot of stations have contracts for tower work lined up and to change the timetable would cost them a bunch of money. Plus there is considerable expense in running two transmitters. Electricity alone is a significant expense.
I’ve also noticed that some stations have finally stopped punishing the people who ARE watching the digital signals and put their crawling messages on the analog channel only. They used to pester us on both.
I saw that video a while back. I was cracking up.