Is Herbert Hoover managing the DTV transition?

IS HERBERT HOOVER MANAGING THE DTV TRANSITION?
[SOURCE: Lasar's Letter on the FCC, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
[Commentary] The Bush administration's "deregulatory phase" approach to what one National Association of Broadcasters official has called "our Y2K" -- the impending shutdown of all analog TV signals after February 17, 2009 -- doesn't fly with some members of the FCC's Consumer Advisory Committee. That move, if it took place today, would turn an estimated 21 million "rabbit ears only" TV sets into useless pieces of furniture (about 17 percent of TV households), many of them belonging to people who do not own digital TV receivers, do not buy digital cable or satellite service, live on fixed incomes, have hearing or visual disabilities, are quite elderly, live in remote rural areas, or deal with more than one of these conditions. Moreover Catherine Seidel, Chief of the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau disclosed that 32 million Americans subscribe to analog, rather than digital cable. These consumers could lose their signal as well, "unless the Commission acts," Seidel said. To alert the public to this impending challenge, the government has budgeted a paltry five million dollars to the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA), whose job will be to offer two 40 dollar coupons to every American, each good towards a converter set top box that will turn any old rabbit ears machine into a digital ready receiver. In contrast, Britain has penciled in about 400 million for this educational task. But not to worry. The U.S., in the grand tradition of Herbert Hoover style industry voluntarism, plans to rely on the private sector to get the word out.
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