NAB Ticked Off At CEA Spectrum 'Clock'

The Consumer Electronics Association, which has been cranking up its campaign for broadcast spectrum via its blog and new studies, has created a "spectrum crunch clock" that claims to tally the "lost opportunity costs to the U.S. economy and consumers with every minute we delay responsibly managing our nation's spectrum resources."

The National Association of Broadcasters calls it more of a crock than a clock. The online counter calculates that "lost" cost at $14,444 per minute, and set the "clock" to a total that dates the accounting from March 16, 2010, when the National Broadband Plan was unveiled. At press time, the clock (actually more of a numerical tally along the lines of those national debt counters) was at $34,405,110,797 and constantly increasing at a rate.