Cultural divide needs bridging as TV goes digital

The cable and consumer electronics industry is spending more than $1 billion to make sure that TV-watching Americans know they have until February to prepare their sets to receive a digital signal. It's a public information campaign so pervasive that every American will be exposed to an estimated 642 messages - on TV, radio, online and elsewhere - reminding them that if they don't take the appropriate action they will live the darkest of American nightmares: Their TVs will stop working on Feb. 17, 2009. Make that every English-speaking American will receive that number of nags. For other sectors of the TV audience - specifically, TV watchers for whom English is a second language, money is sometimes tight and television is a main connection to native culture - the warnings will be few. Some representatives of that audience were sitting among the gray-haired folks in Lady Shaw Senior Center in San Francisco's Chinatown this week listening to community organizer Anni Chung explain the technicalities and practicalities of the digital TV changeover. None of the campaign's billion dollars trickled down to Chung's Self-Help for the Elderly senior care organization, but she's taken the responsibility of spreading the message to native Chinese speakers, particularly low-income seniors.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/13/DDJA1180IU.D...