If you buy a man a horse and call it transportation in a world full of cars and freeways, you do him no favors. This is the sort of thinking that is killing analog television. The effects of the full switchover to digital television broadcasts are likely to be as catastrophic as the Y2K phenomenon proved to be - it's a lot of hoopla over a bang that will likely be less than a fizzle. That's likely what lawmakers had in mind when they enacted the law that requires television stations to make the switch which has been rescheduled for June 12, 2009. .
While certainly 6.5 million households that now receive signal via antennae rather than from satellite or cable will turn on their sets on the day of the switch to see snow, the fact is that those folks represent about 2% of the American populous, and tend to be people who don't consider television to be a priority or who may find greater productivity as the result of the death of their television signal.
While some might argue that the switchover unfairly affects the poor, people who cannot afford neither new televisions, nor the converter boxes that make reception possible, the fact is, crass or otherwise, that those people will not have enough voice to raise a stink. Their sets will merely become trash. One overall affect, then of the decision to do away with analog television for the United States is that landfills will pick up about 6 million energy hogging televisions and over the course of a few years, electronic sellers will benefit from a boom in the sales of converter boxes and new televisions. .
Television is a privilege, not a right. Change is coming, and as the car replaced the horse, and faster cars replaced the model T, change is on the horizon for television. Its affect will make TV better. Information will travel faster, clearer, and most importantly, cleaner. .
In the case of the digital switchover, change is a good thing. .