Obama’s First Mistake In My Eyes

Pic­ture from here

I could pick on a few things actu­ally, once again I didn’t vote for the guy, but I don’t absolutely detest him.   I’m in wait and see mode.  Ars Tech­nica is report­ing about Obama’s plead to push back the tran­si­tion to dig­i­tal TV.   If we look at the dig­i­tal TV migra­tion time­line, we can see the orig­i­nally sched­uled date was Dec. 31 2006.   Because of mul­ti­ple issues it was pushed back and brings us to this upcom­ing Feb. 17th as the tran­si­tion time.

We can argue that the gov­ern­ment hasn’t done enough to inform the pub­lic or make it easy for the pub­lic, but I would argue oth­er­wise.   I was well aware of this migra­tion when it was first dis­cussed over 10 years ago.   All in all the gov­ern­ment has pushed out this tran­si­tion longer then nec­es­sary.   You can say that’s it’s a good cau­tious thing they are doing by wait­ing and delay­ing, but every delay costs the tax pay­ers more money.

If we truly want to get through this we need to pull the ban­dage off as quickly as possible.

January 9, 2009 | Creeva | Tags: , , , , | View Comments
  • Hello, for a long time I read your blog, thanks for that that write interesting and
    useful posts.I consider that blogers it is possible to name many journalists.

    Good luck
  • BTW a couple people that haven't commented openly thought I was doing this because I hated Obama. I don't hate the guy - if I embraced the concept of a two party system I would have chosen him over McCain - I just don't buy into the two party system ideal.
  • You have a valid argument for not delaying, and I might even agree with you, except for one thing. The government program that sends people coupons to use when buying converter boxes has run out of money as of January 4. If you request a coupon now, you are put on a "waiting list." And I think for that reason alone they need to delay the roll-out.

    It's very surprising to me how many people are still receiving analog TV over the air, through an antenna. Apparently it is surprising to the government, as well. ;-)
  • The problem is that it will always be a problem of not protecting everyone. They extend this for 20 years and there will still be people with analog TVs that attempt to get over the air transmissions.

    It's also not the governments job to make sure everyone can reach and have TV. I'm sure that I sound callous, but when you are looking at an over arching issue such as this it's always better to take yourself out of the problem.

    People with cable, they are fine - people with Satelite - they are fine. In most of the Ohio people actually don't have the capability anyways to get OTA signals - I live in a black out area where I can get one channel that doesn't really come in.

    If the govenment is truly worried about the people that have not migrated over - give them PBS - since PBS gets government money - let them exist past the cut off date. All major networks should be forced to migrate over - emergency information can still be passed over by PBS.

    If major broadcasters and advertisers are worried about loosing viewers because of the change, maybe they would kick in money for the converter boxes to save their own bottom line. The longer we wait the problem won't be solved - only faced with adversity do people actually change - the fear of adversity just scares people into thinking they may have to change. They then complain and espouse fears of doom and gloom instead of rationally looking at the problem. By giving them the actual pain things can change.
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