Eugene-area broadcasters will switch to digital Feb. 17, despite Congress’s delay of the deadline to June 12.
Although broadcasters and cable companies have warned television viewers of the Feb. 17 deadline for the past year, the Obama administration saw need to delay the deadline to give TV owners more time to prepare for digital and successfully legislated the delay last week. The stimulus package before Congress includes $650 million for additional DTV converter box coupons.
Communication studies professor Carl Bybee said that in the giant effort by the FCC and broadcasters to implement new technology, the reasons behind the digital switch have been left out of news coverage, leaving the public unaware and spending money they may not have on expensive televisions and scrambling over coupons.
The transition will free up broadcast spectrums for use by police, fire and rescue squads, but the greatest use of these spectrums will be auctioned off to businesses
interested in providing wireless service to customers like AT&T and Verizon. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 initiated the national switch to DTV, but Bybee said the public had no voice in the decision to sell publicly owned broadcast spectrums.
Sophomore Zoe Bardsley said that while announcements thoroughly informed viewers on how to prepare for the switch, there was no explanation of why DTV was necessary.
“I don’t really know why, I just figured it was something they had to do,” she said. “There hasn’t been any confusion about what you have to do, but there’s been confusion on why.”
Freshman Bryan Clement is ready for DTV, but he’s also unclear on broadcasters’ analog abandonment.
“I wasn’t really interested in why, so I didn’t look into it,” he said. “My guess would be it’s just a business move, but I haven’t seen any whys.”
Greg Raschio, general manager of KVAL, said viewers have had plenty of notice and time to make the necessary changes to receive a digital TV signal.
“For us, the date has been set for over three years, and we’ve been telling people for over a year pretty adamantly,” Raschio said. “We don’t think those who aren’t ready now will be ready by June 12.”
While broadcasters in the Portland area and in cities across the country are adopting the June 12 transition date, Raschio said KVAL and local broadcasters are ready to make the switch now. KVAL has been broadcasting on “temporary authority” on channel 25 in anticipation of the switch, Raschio said, and will move to channel 13 in the early morning hours of Feb. 17.
Al Stavitsky, associate dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, said the DTV conversion has become an issue for civil rights activists who are concerned about the loss of media access unprepared viewers will experience.
“The people who are least prepared are at-risk communities, low-income communities, the elderly, people of color, the most vulnerable in society,” he said. “This is fairly unprecedented, taking technology that seemed to be working fine and telling people you’re going to need this new technology.”
Raschio estimated that more than 1,400 viewers in the Eugene area who currently only pick up signals over the air will be affected by the Feb. 17 switch to digital.
While the DTV switch raises questions of equity for social activists, Bybee said the failure of this transition is in the media’s coverage of the legislation that pushed the new technology on an uninformed public.
“The real question is, do we have a media system serving the interests of the public in the U.S.?” Bybee said.
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Transition to the digital age
Daily Emerald
February 10, 2009
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