House votes down DTV delay.

Apparently the right still has some fight left.

There are two principal reasons for delaying the transition and both are the result of repub incompetence. If you want to reward repub mismanagement, you should oppose a delay. If you think fixing problems caused by repub mismanagement you should support a delay.

THe two problems are (1) the screwed up coupon program for converters which was budgeted to have enough money for 33 million coupons but which ran aground after only 20 million coupons had been redeemed, leaving more than 3 million requests for coupons on a waiting list that will not be filled in time for coupons to get to people and for them to get their boxes before Feb 17 and (2) the fact that, despite knowing (based on the Wilmington NC transition trial run) that between one and two million people can be expected to call the FCC's DTV transition hotline on the day of/day after the national transition, and despite soliciting bids for outsourced call center contracts in September, the repub chairman of the FCC (the "Brownie" of the DTV transition) didn't issue the contracts until early January, virtually assuring that the call center process won't be coordinated, and the calls centers won't be staffed by adequately trained people, by February.

I can think of 1001 things the money would be better spent on, this includes several monuments to Herbert Hoover.

includes lower income families, elderly people, and non-english speaking families who disproportionately rely on over the air television and are most in need of assistance in making the transition so that they have uninterrupted access to broadcast television, which for many is essentially a lifeline service.

The repubs, of course, oppose spending money on poor, elderly, non-english speaking people.

There is nothing of more value the federal government could provide to lower income families, elderly people, and non-english speaking families than a television converter.

I believe there are many roles for the government in providing social services, but a subsudized STB isn't one of them.

Fuck it, TV's good enough already. DTV is zero priority to me. Why am I being forced into a legally-required stimulus program for the TV industry? (Well, required if I still want to catch those vitally important shows.)

See, when they start mandating conversion to electric powered vehicles, I'll be impressed.

It's time it's a done deal. If, after all this time, there are still some people who haven't gottentheir box, I'm sorry, but the time has come...or long overdue.

If you're going to make a claim like that, try having the facts on your side.
Here is the history of the dtv transition, not some made up stuff you read somewhere and decided to repeat:

Congress initially handed off the decision as to what the transition deadline should be to the FCC in 1996, and in early 1997 the FCC (which initially sought comment on a fifteen year transition) decided tentatively that it might be possible to complete the transition in ten years. But that was just a tentative conclusion -- the FCC said at the time that it would review and reconsider the timetable every two years. And just a few months later, long before that first review even occurred, as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Congress decided to ratify the December 31, 2006 deadline, but at the same time to create a major loophole in that "deadline" -- namely that the transition would not occur on that date for any markets in which fewer than 85 percent of the households had the capability of receiving digital signals. That "loophole" effectively extended the deadline to a date uncertain. In late 2005/early 2006, having come to the realization that the transition might never occur under the then-applicable standard, Congress bit the bullet and mandated a "hard date" --February 17, 2009. In so doing, Congress actually moved up the deadline, rather than delay it.

there's been sufficient time to make the conversion. I say just damn do it. The few people who suddenly realize they can't see their TV sill soon recognize they've not been paying any attention.

Supporting the delay is admitting that the transition was screwed up on their watch, which is one of the reasons the repubs oppose the delay.

of, they simply ignored all the ads to get your coupon or you wont be able to watch your tv. If you don't put a deadline on things, you're always going to have a group of people who will ignore, procratinate, or simply think it will be ok.

But I have considerable sympathy for those who followed instructions and ended up on a waiting list six weeks before the transition even though only 20 million of the 33 million coupons for which money was allocated have been redeemed.

the republicans voted almost unilaterally to not delay it. Strange like that, huh?

edit: Americans don't want excuses, they want action.

Stop 100,000 Americans on the street and I bet less than 5 of them say getting 6 more months out of their Philco TV is their top legislative priority for Obama.

Go ahead, stop 100,000 Americans on the street and tell them they have to either stop watching tv or pony up for a new one or the stupid converter box. Why is this a priority to them?

Why are we all required to participate in a stimulus program for consumer electronics companies?

After this delay there will be another delay to accomodate those who have old TV's with no RF jacks and can't use a converter box even if they got the coupon and even if they could afford one without a coupon.

So lets just cancel the conversion for the benefit of those who still own a Zenith G2438R or Philco Cool Console TV.

Where was the drama when Cingular turned off my analog cell phone?

shoved into reality.

like Bush Alaska (not GWB, bush as in off the road system).

No cable, nor ever likely to be.

No transmitters, at least for the next 10 or so years.

Converters don't work when you're that far off the grid (we're talking place where you either walk to them, snowmobile to them, boat to them, or fly to them).

There's many areas of the midwest/west that have the same problems.

I don't have a problem with it - Fairbanks, Juneau, Anchorage, Kenai, Valdez, etc. are all ready for it. But just because the towns/cities are, doesn't mean the villages have time OR money to convert.