Sorting Through the Analog to Digital TV Mess 798
H_Fisher writes "CNN offers an article from Fortune magazine, giving a look at the problems surrounding the mandatory switch from analog to digital TV in the U.S., now slated for 2009. 'Managing this transition -- which will render about 70 million TV sets obsolete -- will be not be easy,' Marc Gunther writes. Among the problems: millions of American households without cable or satellite access will lose free access to news and weather along with the rest of their broadcast fare. Uncle Sam's solution? 'Yes, the very same federal government that is cutting back on college loans and food stamps will soon be issuing TV vouchers' - $1.5 billion to help U.S. households buy new digital TV equipment."
Why is this a problem? (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh come on now! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not fair. Surely protecting the priceless "inter-lickual propretty" is more important than little things like eating and education. Where are your priorities? Your sense of ethics? Your campaign contributions?
$1.5B is chump change... (Score:1, Insightful)
College vs. TV (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
!"increasing as much as planned" != "cutting back"
Of course, it is a
'Yes, the very same federal government...' (Score:4, Insightful)
I realize this is in an 'analysis' piece, but I would be very surprised if it were actually true. Unless by cutting back, he means cutting back in the rate of growth. I'm not even going to attempt to Google this to find meaningful figures, for (I hope) obvious reasons. Anyone know where we can see the real increases/decreases for funding of such items?
Take a look at the UK... (Score:2, Insightful)
Set top boxes cost from as little as £30 for terrestrial thus meaning those 70 million analogue TVs will be good for years to come.
What happened to the free market? (Score:3, Insightful)
Add to that the landfill mess this looks to cause. That's a LOT of analog TVs that go to essentially worthless in very short order. We're already dealing with too much computer waste going into the landfills, and now the US is going to legislate putting a very large pile of still functioning and capable televisions in there all at once?
Brilliant. Special interest groups at work again in the legislature it would seem.
television serves the interests of the state (Score:3, Insightful)
In our current system of government, the greatest danger to the existing power structure is voting. A better educated populace is more likely to vote, while a TV watching populace is less likely to do so. So it is in the interests of the state to do what it can to discourage education beyond the minimum level necessary to support the state. Hence the emphasis on putting lots of dollars into extending the reach and influence of TV.
Re:Oh come on now! (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, does it even matter anymore at this point?
news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of your feeleings on television, it is important that everyone have free (or near free) access to news, state of the union addresses, etc.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong, because I guarantee that the above number is based on spectrum space now.
Spectrum space commands such a high price because it is limited right now. Open up the supply, with the same demand, and price goes down. This is economics 101.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:0, Insightful)
Speak for yourself.
Digital "television" is practically obsolete as soon as it appears. Who here doesn't recognize by now that generic networks (i.e. the Internet) are the present and future of communications?
Sure, digital cable networks have one advantage. They're faster than Internet broadcasting -- if you happen to be one of the centralized broadcasters. It's a one-to-many setup, with unequal control by design. It's subsidized directly and indirectly by tax funds, basically headed straight into the pockets of the corporate landlords.
We shouldn't be wasting money to prop up these behemoths. Forget them. Computer networks make them obsolete, and the short-term speed advantage of the cable networks is only due to the fact that they're working in a broadcast-optimized architecture.
Why set any regulations or standards by force? (Score:3, Insightful)
First, setting a regulatory standard for television broadcasts and forcing the industry to adhere to them is no longer necessary -- when TV was new, I can understand government enforcing a standard. With technology changing monthly, letting the market figure out what is needed is the best solution.
To me, this seems to be simple cronyism by the State. By creating these standards, they're creating a high cost to entry in the video broadcast market. The quicker we see broadband hit the homes, the more I realize that broadcast television is a complete waste of space. Deregulating ALL broadcast television and letting the frequencies be used by wireless broadcasters would make much more sense to me. Can you imagine how cheap and how fast wireless would be if we gave up all those megahertz?
Broadcasting isn't even important: people want video on demand (whether by cable, satellite, ThePirateBay, or PVR). Broadcasting isn't even efficient anymore: advertisers prefer knowing exact numbers rather than "we think we hit 700,000 with this show." In the long run, Congress and the FCC are applying ideas from 1970 to technology that could change 20 times in the next 20 years. Why restrict it?
I say it is time to just ignore these guys -- if big TV broadcasters want to continue to make a mess and force the little guy out of the business, let them. We'll counter it with rebroadcaster their garbage over BitTorrent and through the sharing of information as it was meant to be: free. Take the infinite supply of data versus the finite demand and you end up with a cost of zero.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget college, forget healthcare, we need radio bandwidth and tax cuts for the richest to help fight the terrorists.
Sickening.
80 years ago people were expected to read Shakespear in the 4th grade, now we (MAYBE) get into it by high school. We've been dumbed down folks, and if you don't think TV played a large part in that, well, you watch too much TV...
Re:Why is this a problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?ty
I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of that.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Rate of growth is also bogus (Score:1, Insightful)
Ask instead why we need to spend approx. 50% of the budget on military spending when there was a temendous 'build down' in the 90's. Someone is profiting and it is not students, the elderly, the unemployed or anyone else in a disadvantaged position.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
"We" do? Personally, I'm still complaining about needing to switch to begin with. Between the government-mandated switch, the push for the broadcast flag, and now these new pork vouchers, I find nothing to be happy about with the entire process.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:1, Insightful)
Take it up with Fortune, not me. You did RTFA, didn't you? That's a direct quote from the submitted article.
Forget college, forget healthcare, we need radio bandwidth and tax cuts for the richest to help fight the terrorists.
If only there were an emoticon for rolling eyes.
Yeah, that's what it's all about.
Not to mention that there will be a NET GAIN from the bandwidth auction alone and innovation by tech companies who purchase said bandwidth.
Over a full third of taxpayers in this country pay no taxes at all. The top 1% of taxpayers - and these aren't all or even mostly people who are fabulously wealthy; these include people who make just over $250,000/year in household income - as of 2004, pay over 40% of the tax. The top 5% now pay over 60% of the tax. The entire bottom 50% now pay less than 3% of the tax burden, and most of them are at the upper part of the 50%. The bottom 35% pay nothing.
So, I ask you: how is this not fair? Or should the entire tax burden be paid by the top, say, 5%? The poor - the bottom, say, 20%, will still be poor and struggling. Since, as you say, the more fortunate have more than enough money, perhaps we could take some of theirs, and simply give it to the poor? [1999 ref [wisc.edu]]
80 years ago people were expected to read Shakespear in the 4th grade, now we (MAYBE) get into it by high school. We've been dumbed down folks, and if you don't think TV played a large part in that, well, you watch too much TV...
I think this attitude is hilarious coming from slashdot. I have seen it almost too many times to count. From the "technology isn't bad, it's just technology" crowd, and indictment of a communication technology. And yes, one-way is still communication. Otherwise, we should trash newspapers and "Shakespear" (sic - hmm, maybe you're right about the dumbing down...), too.
TV isn't a villain here any more than any other technology. The lack of personal responsibility, however, is. Of course, your message doesn't seem to hold personal responsibility in very high regard, so your assessment isn't surprising.
Re:Are you fucking kidding me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Until someone invents a dgital interface for humans then at some point, even if t's the last in the chain, you'll HAVE to convert the signals into analog (like, you know, colors and sounds). This step is NOT optional, and therefore there will ALWAYS be an analog outlet to get copy from.
DRM will be defeated every time until there is found a way to send an encrypted digital signal into someone's skull and decrypt it in there, and even then, somebody's gonna have a dongle poking out from behind their left ear, spewing the latest copy of 'Rocky DCLXVI' unencrypted.
Re:Not really that bad (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why is this a problem? (Score:1, Insightful)
obselete and will be heading for a landfill and underground water table near you.
This is a massive infrastructure change. That has costs beyond what you pay at BestBuy.
And who benefits? The consumer, or the corporation? Think about it.
Why is this a problem?
Re:Are you fucking kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no such thing as a "HD Antenna". UHF/VHF antennas can be used to watch Digital OTA broadcasts, in theory. There's a whole other question about the quality of the signal as received by the antenna- those rabbit ears probably won't work very wekk. A weak analog signal results in a snowy picture-- it's low quality but watchable. A weak digital signal can result in a "stuttering" picture on the screen, like when you try to watch a scratched DVD. It's unwatchable.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
If we converted to digital and left the poorest of our nation out in the cold, we'd devolve into some discussion about how the evil government was depriving the weakest among us from access to a free press, possibly even with a few stats peppered in about how TV is even more important for them because of illiteracy rates, and so on, and maybe some good socialism arguments to boot.
But when we DO help them, it's, of course, a conspiracy to spread propaganda and keep everyone under their thumbs! (After all, network television is nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the government!)
You guys are the best.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:1, Insightful)
Government of the TV, by the TV and for the TV (Score:4, Insightful)
The analog-to-digital crisis--nothing that requires emergency expenditures of billions is not a crisis--points up TV's supremacy in American life. Those screens dare not go blank, even for a moment. It is from TV that Americans take proper instruction in the backstabbing rituals of the I Got Mine society ("reality TV"), learn to fear the system's guardians (cops and courtroom dramas), routinely covet what they can't afford (advertising) and get hallucinatory reassurance from square-jawed automatons ("news"). For the dwindling few who still watch such things, it's also where the marionette-in-chief periodically appears on glistening guide wires to rattle off his sermons.
If Congress didn't help lift the declining middle and growing Wal-Mart classes into the digital age, there'd be trouble. You can't run a nation into debt servitude, steal its liberties, mire it in futile (and feudal) distant wars, corrode its health and environment, leave it to drown in natural disasters, and force it to work longer hours all while presiding over historical levels of official corruption if you also hide the electronic teat. Baby, as every momma knows, wants milk.
Re:Not really that bad (Score:1, Insightful)
Bread and Circuses (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyone mention the obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you RTFA you will see that the government will be selling off the spectrum used by analog tv for an estimated 10 billion dollars... Hence, spending a small portion of that to facilitate the switch still leaves them with a 8.5 BILLION DOLLAR profit.
So can we please not have any more stupid posts about increased spending, when this deal is entirely designed to make money, not spend it. 8.5 billion will be made almost immediately, with a likely increase in other technologies boosting the economy in the long run as a direct effect.
On a side note, I'd love to see any conversation about this move to digital being driven, in part, by the ease of applying DRM to a digital signal.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
The original poster was correct. An increase in spending is an increase in spending. Not spending as much as someone wants to be spent is NOT a decrease in spending.... the amount of money being spent is still an increase.
It just sounds so much better to the people who don't pay attention, or worse, want to try and set the stage of an argument based on a lie.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretend the following:
Your job is to provide 1 apple to every student each day. It is 2005 and apples cost 50 cents. You have 200 students. The 2005 government budget has given you $100 dollars a day to do the job. You can do your job and have no problems. You serve 100% of the students.
The government forecasts that in 2006, apples will cost 60 cents and increases in enrollment will give you 220 students. Because it knows that these are just projections, the government projects a 2006 budget for you of $140 a day, 40% increase in budget, but you should be able to do your job with a little money to spare. You still serve 100% of the students.
When it comes time to actually pass the budget, the government gives you a budget of $125 a day budget, a 25% increase over this year's budget. However, government projections of prices and enrollments were on target. Apples now cost 60 cents and you have to provide apples for 220 students each day.
You can only purchase 208 applies, which means that 12 students are no longer covered.
Did your budget increase? Yes.
Did you cut back on the percentage of students you can serve and the services you offer? Yes.
Thus not increasing by as much as planned does equal cutting back.
Re:'Yes, the very same federal government...' (Score:3, Insightful)
I realize this is in an 'analysis' piece, but I would be very surprised if it were actually true. Unless by cutting back, he means cutting back in the rate of growth.
Neither is true. Anyone who tries to criticize the current administration for spending less on anything is either ill-informed or has been living in a box for the past 6 years. During George W. Bush's term in office, Federal spending has increased at a rate opposite of free fall. Its one of the things that many conservatives like myself find appalling, but we don't see the Democrats as offering any real alternatives to Bush's spending plans (all they do is whine and complain).
I hate how other (alleged) "small government" conservatives try to "argue away" this issue. I am sure that for a president to get the things he wants out of Congress he needs to give a little on the spending side, and I can completely understand that winning a war requires spending money. But Bush literally went off the deep end when he expanded Medicare to cover prescription drug costs, spent tons of money on a useless Farm Bill, and threw even more money at an ineffective Education Department.
There are a lot of conservatives out there would be more than happy with a president who was not only serious about winning the War on Terror but who was also more concerned with keeping the size of the Federal government as small as possible. This idea of offering TV subsidies to people to switch is beyond ludicrous. No one has a Federally-guaranteed right to free TV. If someone wants a television, there's nothing stoping most people from going and working for the money to buy one.
Not individually. (Score:4, Insightful)
But put $1.5 billion more into scholarships and such and I can guarantee that more students will get a college education.
Re:Why set any regulations or standards by force? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because we let them. They do not have any power that we as a people don't grant to them. Luckily for them, that granting of power can be passive, since voter apathy about issues that truly matter to our freedoms (not the abortion and gay-marriage shoutfests) is at an all time high.
First, setting a regulatory standard for television broadcasts and forcing the industry to adhere to them is no longer necessary -- when TV was new, I can understand government enforcing a standard. With technology changing monthly, letting the market figure out what is needed is the best solution.
The government only has a right to regulate those areas where there is a finite amount of space for competition, such as the radio spectrum. There are only so many radio bands, and companies have to share. Regulating ensures that the sharing is done fairly (at least in a perfect world, which this isn't). The FCC has no business regulating cable television, since there is no scarcity of bandwidth. Most cable television broadcasters self-censor in order to avoid public backlash. But there is no legal reason why Spike TV can't start broadcasting porn.
To me, this seems to be simple cronyism by the State. By creating these standards, they're creating a high cost to entry in the video broadcast market.
Politicians always try to protect those who give them money. Media companies contributed $26 million in the 2000 and 2002 election cycles [capitaleye.org].
The quicker we see broadband hit the homes, the more I realize that broadcast television is a complete waste of space. Deregulating ALL broadcast television and letting the frequencies be used by wireless broadcasters would make much more sense to me. Can you imagine how cheap and how fast wireless would be if we gave up all those megahertz?
Fast? Certainly. Cheap? Not on your life. Keep in mind it would be sold by the same companies that charge $50 a month for basic cable that is completely ad supported.
Broadcasting isn't even important: people want video on demand (whether by cable, satellite, ThePirateBay, or PVR).
Hear, hear. The days of the "push medium" are coming to a middle.
Broadcasting isn't even efficient anymore: advertisers prefer knowing exact numbers rather than "we think we hit 700,000 with this show."
Absolutely. Unfortunately, if the advertisers knew exactly which ads were working and which were not, they would purchase less advertising, since they would be able to stop "wasting" money on advertising that is ineffectual. This worries the sellers of advertising space.
In the long run, Congress and the FCC are applying ideas from 1970 to technology that could change 20 times in the next 20 years.
Legislation is always years behind technology. Nothing new to see here.
Why restrict it?
Because their campaign financers are asking them to.
I say it is time to just ignore these guys -- if big TV broadcasters want to continue to make a mess and force the little guy out of the business, let them. We'll counter it with rebroadcaster [sic] their garbage over BitTorrent and through the sharing of information as it was meant to be: free. Take the infinite supply of data versus the finite demand and you end up with a cost of zero.
Ok, I was with you up until here.
Information may want to be free, but entertainment sure doesn't. It costs a lot of money to create that entertainment, and the people who made it naturally want that money back. The problem is that within the current system, the market forces are skewed, because people have to pay for bundled sets of entertainment or allow the advertisers to choose what they watch. Unfortunately for the consumers, a pull medium is simply not viable as an
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
These people are leaches on the system. It has nothing to do with who's being taxed. As the GP said, the top %5 pay the majority of the tax dollars already, both in total $$ and % of income. That the type of people you mentioned exist is a sad fact of human nature and the kama system hopefully will get them, but for each one of them there is a John Chambers (CEO, cisco) who lowered his pay (to $1.00 IIRC) to help the company save money and to up morale for his employees, there is a Craig Barret, who durring the downturn took a 75% pay hit because that is what was fair, and there are others just like them. These guys (and those like them) pay 40% of the federal government bankroll and are GoodPeople(tm).
[/rant]
-nB
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Too little attention is paid to the illegal activity that goes on in subsidized housing in my community... Someone needs to be down there to say, "You own $5,000 worth of new electronics, move out and get an apartment." It's their money to spend... but the taxpayers are their landlord AND their source of support. We should be able to say when one get's cut off.
But resources are spread too thin... and sending people out to developments costs money.
I'm not saying that all subsidized housing is bad. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be abused... Like multi-million dollar bridges to an island of fifty people etc.
Re:What the? (Score:0, Insightful)
The old man's worked since before I was born (and I'm not young any more), you think he doesn't deserve retirement?
What else would you have the old and poor do, drink and gamble? Here's a hint: drinking and gambling cost money, money the poor and elderly don't have. Or would you rather the old man spend his free time selling crack?
You young dickheads all begrudge people stuff (like TV) they've worked all their lives for. Guess what - unless the rest of us are lucky, you'll be old some day. Remember this post, young assholes.
They thought WE were bad, today's youth (at least the
BTW, apologies for a/c, it's mcgrew here. Fuck all of you. mrc... no mrc today. Please get the mrc machine fixed, k?thx
Air Force enlisted men are smarter than (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets not even get into how you will frequently run out of apples while waiting for multiple competitive bids from apple suppliers. Then you must make sure that the apple supply contracts are handed to vendors in the proper legislative districts so you will have the votes you need.
special consideration to 'disadvantaged' apple suppliers
Invironmental impact studies
Gotta make sure you pay the fairtrade apple rate
and so on...
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, the upper 1% control far more than 1% of the wealth or income. The only way to get the upper 1% to control only 1% of income is to have perfect equality. In practice, the number is more like the top 1% controlling around 50% of the wealth. Even under a flat tax, their fair tax burden would be around 50% of total taxes paid. Anything less is a regressive tax regime.
What happens is that the poor pay fairly high rates (probably around 20%-30% of income) because they are still responsible for the social security tax (11% or so once you include the employer portion), sales tax, tolls, and sin taxes (gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol). The middle class pay a similar amount, with a higher nominal rate being offset by fat mortgage deductions, better tax preparers, and far less sin taxes and tolls. Even without breaking any laws, rich people will pay less taxes because they essentially pay no sales, tolls, or sin taxes and they often shop around for lower tax countries to park their money. Capital is also favorably treated, and most of their income comes from capital.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see. Say you have a married couple - perhaps two people who both work as professionals in IT or some other area that they had to go to school to tackle. Between them, they make $250k a year before taxes, working probably 70-80 hours a week each at least. Unlike the low-income people you're talking about (who pay NO taxes), these two people have a very large chunk of their income harvested from them. Do you really think that those people (who, if they live in the sort of large urban area that can pay them that sort of living, probably also have a $2800 monthly mortgage on a 40-year-old two bedroom townhouse) are taking poor people's money? Do you really think that they "have" the money that an 18 year old flipping burgers should have instead? How much should a burger cost, in order to pay... what, $20,000 more?... to each burger-flipper? And do you really think that someone who designs hospital buildings, researches gene therapies, leads an engineering consulting team, or creates art desired by a large following should pay $10 for a $3 burger for that purpose? And would you, what, use the federal government to make sure that no other burger joint gets to offer a slightly cheaper burger lest we disrupt the artificial cash flow to the burger flipping strata of society? Or how about we tax the professionals a lot, and don't tax the burger flippers at all? Oh, right, we already do that. And how did we manage, despite painful blows to the country's economy (oil delivery shocks from Katrina, etc) have more economic growth and lower unemployment than, say, more socialist-minded places like France or Germany? By reducing the tax burden on the people that take their money and invest it the businesses that hire people and grow the economy.
Just admit it. You think that anyone with enough drive and capacity to produce enough income to live in an OK townhouse and own two cars that they have to drive an hour and half each day to the job where they work 70 hours should be forced to support other people who don't. But people like that aren't "born into money," they produce something of value and thus make the money. You act like there's some pie of fixed size out there, and that the minute one person earns a dollar more than he did the day before, some other person is thus going to have to go without that same dollar. What a load of decades-old socialist mumbo-jumbo crap. The economies that are framed around that perception fail miserably (and usually violently).
Among the many people I know who are arguably upper-middle-class (I'm not one of them), none of them were "born wealthy." But they, and people like them, pay the lion's share of the taxes in this country, including property taxes. The lower middle class pays very little, and the poor people pay no income taxes... in fact, they get tax credits along with a zillion other entitlements funded mostly by hardworking professionals and their families. That you have to resort to embarassingly ridiculous citations of essentially fictional $10M birthday parties (those just happen all the time, I know) in your attempt to make upper middle class people feel like they're not paying enough taxes is just an indication of how wrong you know you are.
The solution to poverty isn't penalizing productive people even more, it's in making a future of poverty unattractive enough to kids (and their parents) to make them want to actually bother to complete a solid high school and at least a real vocational education. Taking newly created income from someone who just earned it and handing it over to someone who didn't does not change the cultural ruts that keep some families explaining to their kids that sticking with entry level jobs is not a career strategy.
Govt. = SCREWS EVERYTHING UP! (Score:2, Insightful)
Who's fault is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why can't they get one good job?
Even if they have a "good" job, why are they still living check-to-check?
In this country(USA), all of these boil down to personal choices.
Yes, they chose to drop out of school.
Yes, they chose to have sex when they couldn't afford it.
Yes, they chose to buy fancy wheels for their otherwise beat up car rather than save for the future(any future, their own, their kids', any).
The list goes on and except for a very special few who were born with personal disadvantages that really do prevent them from competing with the average Joe, these are the reasons why the poor are poor. THE base reason why the poor are poor is because they have made poor choices.
I have seen those that were not poor become poor because of poor choices. The most common choice of these I have seen is choosing to consume cocaine. What a waste.
Yes, there are those that start poor because their parents are poor, but that is no excuse for staying poor. I have seen poor become not poor, myself and others, by doing nothing more than basically wising up.
I'm not marginalizing anyone's life. I'm just minding my own business. If more would do just that, there would be fewer poor. If you didn't get it, think about it for a moment.
There are a few simple rules to guide your choices in your life, listed in my particular order:
1) In all choices, consider your future.
The rest stem from the first.
2) Be literate, basic reading and arithmetic/algebraic skills are required.
3) Don't have kids until you can afford them.
That's about it. Yes, it is personal responsibility 101.
Magic money! 10 billion from thin air. (Score:3, Insightful)
Where do people think that 10 billion comes from? It's a tax. A very sneaky one, but a tax nonetheless. You'll be paying extra for all the resulting new technology. Or, worse still, the technology won't arrive because the companies paid a ridiculous amount in the auction. We've seen something like that in the UK with mobile phone spectrum. See the first paragraph of this editorial [www.ebu.ch].
So, please, don't talk about the switchover as if it produces money. It doesn't, it's just a tax that people aren't smart enough to complain about.
Public broadcasting (Score:2, Insightful)
It does indeed, until you read that the government is selling off spectrum that belongs to the American public to commercial interests. The first comprehensive legislation on spectrum use and broadcasting was the Radio Act of 1927 [wikipedia.org], which established the Federal Radio Commission, precursor to today's FCC. The Radio Act instructed the FRC to favor those stations which served the "public interest, convenience, or necessity," but the pro-commercial administration of the FRC soon began cracking down on precisely those sorts of stations, run by non-profit groups and universities across the country. The FRC constantly reallocated these stations' spectrum, and finally came to the compromise, if you can call it that, of "allowing" many public interest stations to share a minute portion of the overall spectrum, and licensed the rest of it to commercial networks like NBC and CBS. (In 1927, NBC and CBS hardly existed; in 1931, their stations accounted for 70% of the broadcast power in the U.S.)
This step was the first of many in severely hindering those who wanted to use the electromagnetic spectrum to serve the public interest. Anyone flipping through cable channels today knows all too well who won that battle, and the recent Telecommunications Act of 1996 [wikipedia.org] was more or less the last nail in the coffin -- its deregulatory clauses allowed for the creation of what could perhaps be called a media cartel, as the limits on the number of broadcasting stations one company could own were all but eliminated. Smaller companies merged together and about half of the nation's broadcasting stations changed hands as media giants snapped up as many stations as they could lay their hands on. See the case of Clear Channel Communications [wikipedia.org], which now owns roughly 1200 stations across the country.
Where am I going with all this? If anything, I'd like to see parts of that reclaimed spectrum reserved for public broadcasting, and a significant portion of profit gained from the sale of the rest of the spectrum to private interests allocated to fund public broadcasting. I simply don't think it's justified to use that money for anything else.
For more information on the political history of broadcasting in the U.S., see Robert W. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, ISBN 1-56584-634-6.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason people are bitching about the this subsidy is that while everyone has a different idea on the proper role of government, very few people have "supplying entertainment to the poor" in their list of legitimate government functions.
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, the stupidity. (Score:2, Insightful)
2) Why in the world is the US government subsidizing television reception for outdated TVs in the first place? Couldn't they just announce the cut-off date and then say "sorry, the rest of you were warned"? Those who can afford to subscribe to cable/satellite will continue to do so, and those who can't will go to places where they can watch free public screenings, or spend more time reading. Television access is a luxury, not a right; why has it become one? FTA, Consumer groups say this is only fair because the government is essentially reducing the value of people's property. Well, they don't make media for my 8-track machine anymore -- where's my money???
3) FTA, Sets hooked up to cable or satellite services should work fine no matter what. This means that coax input will remain constant, and this means that we've had digital-to-analog TV converters for YEARS. They're commonly called VCRs; actual tape machines or digital ones will work, so long as it has coax in and out, and RCA out. To convert the signal, the recording part of the machine doesn't even have to operate properly. VCRs that eat tapes but still have working connections are easy to find second-hand at the Salvation Army and garage sales, usually for $5 or less. (This is what I did when I was in college; I hooked up a VHS VCR that ate tapes to a Commodore 64 monior, and I basically had a television set with tuner. All for less than $15. And this was "all the way back" in 2000.) New machines can cost as little as $50 for a VHS VCR and $100 for a DVD recorder. So to think that new analog-to-digital converters, without tape or DVD writing mechanisms, should be $40 to $80 apiece is ludicrous.
4) FTA, People are supposed to apply for the vouchers during a three-month window in 2008, and use them within three months. But there probably won't be enough vouchers to go around... You think? When the allocated budget is about a quarter of what it should be? Say it ain't so! And the logistics surrounding such a short turn-around time are horrendous.
6) For 20 million people who have been watching TV over radio spectrum, the digital-to-analog converters are going to be rather useless. Why? Because one of the reasons that they were watching free TV is because they couldn't afford to pay for cable/satellite in the first place! Why does the government figure that these people can suddenly afford to have cable/satellite installed and pay the monthly fees? This is a modern-day rendition of "let them eat cake!"
6) You may remember a previous Slasdot post [slashdot.org] about the Digital Content Security Act, which has legislators introducing a "measure [that] will outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital video signals, effective one year from its enactment..." Digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital devices are easily reversable, especially when you're talking coax to RCA. So once the MPAA has all television converted to digital, they want to outlaw the hardware that the government plans to subsidize so that people can watch their content? Am I the only one who sees a flaw with this?
Misunderstanding relationships (Score:5, Insightful)
Television is not provided gratis to the viewing public out of the generosity of some media mogul's heart (or space formerly therefore).
Television is a MEANS of delivering viewer eyeballs to advertiser content. They 'bait' you with 24 minutes of programming per half hour, and then hope you don't notice that they 'switch' to advertising for at least 6 minutes. (Admittedly, lately they've gotten more subtle about the switch part by using product placement, and cheapened the bait with 'Reality' TV, but the principle's the same.)
Hi-def will be a way for these companies to put out more attractive bait. (OK, actually what happened was that the digital compression algorithms have allowed them to squeeze more analog signals into the allowed bandwidth, more like dropping LOTS of shitty-baited hooks in the water instead of something particularly attractive. Gov't is mandating that they use only the 'pretty bait'.)
So could someone explain to me why the US gov't is subsidising a privately owned and MASSIVELY profit-generating product delivery system?
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:2, Insightful)
I see your point about damned if you do/dont, but that aside... The whole thing here is that nobody needs television. It's a privilege, not a right. And even if it was a right, who's stopping all of these poor, illterate, TV-starved people from going to a library (which the government already funds), which has *gasp* free books, movies, and often has screening rooms or free screenings. Even if all poor people were illiterate (which doesn't happen that much in the States, face it), that still leaves the other options open. Oh yes, and libraries provide warmth, shelter, and bathroom facilities as well, so even the homeless could use them without being "left in the cold".
Come on, government, put that $1.5 billion into the nation's libraries, not into upgrading peoples' ancient televisions!
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Insightful? How could this utter crap be modded insightful? Incite-full would be more like it. Oh, and wrong, too. I'm in the upper middle class you talk about. I have a house, a couple cars, and all that. I pay less than 20% in direct taxes. Yes, when you add up federal income tax, medicare, social security, state income/sales tax, local sales/property tax, and all other taxes levied directly on me (vehicle taxes and any other fees or such) I still pay less than 20%, and I'm in the top 20% of wage earners. As a top wage earner, I can say that the top wage earners do not see any additional negative impact on their finances due to the progressive taxation.
It is an issue of the most wealthy getting the greatest benefit from our government, so they should pay the most for it. Sure, they aren't being handed checks, but the government is the one that allows formation of corporations in which they invest and get returns. The government is the one that forms the standing army to defend their wealth from any invaders. The poorest couldn't care less about the standing army. The peasants in Europe never noticed a change in government. They trodded along, only careing about war when it affected their fields, or if they had the opportunity to cheer or throw tomatoes at the officials. Their day-to-day life was completely unchanged. That's not the case for the wealthy when a new government decides to nationalize the assetts of the wealthy. They have the most to lose, by far, and are therefore the ones with the greatest benefit. It makes sense that they get charged a higher rate.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
The inherent failure of your simple world can easily be seen in our educational system. There is no reason that a child in beverly hills should get a better public education than a child in alabama, yet our system is set up so that local communities are in charge of their educational systems, and great disparities emerge as local priorities and resources are expressed in school funding. Meanwhile Bradley Charles Weatherby III gets a top notch public education and Cleatus B Dingleberry doesn't even have books printed in the last 50 years.
My point is this. It's too easy to look at a few useless sacks of crap that stay on welfare because they are lazy and dismiss the entire rank of poor people. The fact is that many of them are hard workers who lack access to education, economic opportunity, or cultural drive to succeed. Through successful redistribution of resources, improving the educational, economic, and social climates where these people live, we can provide a tangible benefit to everyone, including the "upper middle class" workhorses of our country.
Internationally, the situation changes. We ARE in a competitieve climate for resources, and it will only get worse. China and India have over two billion people that want what we have, and the physical material that it would take to get it to all of them does not exist. Energy, metals, food, fresh water, all of these exist in limited supply. You can't eat or drink wealth, nor can you build a townhouse from it. The minute you stop competeing, you learn this the hard way.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:2, Insightful)
Among the many people I know who are arguably upper-middle-class (I'm not one of them), none of them were "born wealthy."
I wish I had time to pick your goofy argument apart piece by piece, but since I work for a living, I'll just take this one point and make a point of my own using your screwed up, baseless logic: Among the many birds I have seen out my kitchen window, none of them were being eaten by cats. Therefore, predation does not exist.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
News flash: groups composed of many people from all over the world don't all think alike! What a concept!
Re:Oh, the stupidity. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the government is making an estimated $10 billion on the deal (auctioning the spectrum), and has decided to allocate some of that money to help people out. Tell me what's wrong with that?
3) FTA, Sets hooked up to cable or satellite services should work fine no matter what. This means that coax input will remain constant, and this means that we've had digital-to-analog TV converters for YEARS. They're commonly called VCRs;
No - you have to have a device capable of translating the digital to analog. The satellite or cable boxes do this. Your VCR will not (unless you have some sort of new fangled HDTV VCR).
6) For 20 million people who have been watching TV over radio spectrum, the digital-to-analog converters are going to be rather useless. Why? Because one of the reasons that they were watching free TV is because they couldn't afford to pay for cable/satellite in the first place! Why does the government figure that these people can suddenly afford to have cable/satellite installed and pay the monthly fees? This is a modern-day rendition of "let them eat cake!"
WTF?? If you have one of the boxes you won't need cable. Just like today - I can get all the major stations HD feed over the air (for free) because I have a new TV with an HD tuner built in. If i had one of these boxes, then I wouldn't need an HDTV with a tuner built in - i could watch free digital signals today.
They can't handle their customer base (Score:3, Insightful)
There are old buildings with old wires, and as the signal strength decreases before it gets to the TV set (or converter box), the loss of signal will create all kinds of glitches.
Bad taps in lock boxes in basements can cause signal breakup, loss of signal entirely, and all manner of artifacting, including, but not limited to extreme pixelation of the image and audio degradation to the point of inaudibility.
In short; the cable companies could find themselves having to re-wire a large percentage of inner-urban areas where the loss of TV entirely for large percentages of the population could even lead to riots.
Worst is that they are in for a surprise when it still won't work because of other equipment failures between their origination point and the destination box.
The cable companies, used to short-changing their customer base and providing the lowest service at the higest prices, will suddenly find itself in the unenviable position of actually having to do WORK to make it all happen. And they aren't going to want to pay for it, having already spent their government subsidies on yachts for the upper executives.
In short, they aren't ready to handle even their existing customer base.
Unrealistic expectations (Score:3, Insightful)
That means duplication or replacement of most existing public safety radio equipment. Since the departments barely have the budgets to maintain the existing systems, where will the money come from to buy, install, and maintain all the new ones? Interoperability was a goal even before 9/11. It still hasn't happened because nobody is willing to pay for it. New spectrum won't help without the equipment to use it.
The rest of the spectrum will be auctioned off to the highest bidders -- probably tech companies. The sale of this valuable, scarce real estate is expected to bring in about $10 billion, maybe more. That will help reduce the federal budget deficit...Scheduled for 2008, the auction will be the biggest spectrum sale since a 1994-95 spectrum auction. That sale helped boost the mobile phone industry, boosting the number of cell phone subscribers in the U.S. from 24 million to 200 million. It also helped drive down the cost of wireless minutes from an average of 47 cents a minute to 9 cents a minute, according to analysis from financial services firm Stifel Nicolaus.
First, recall the huge expenditures needed for new public safety radio equipment. That alone is likely to consume all the auction revenue.
Second, recall the telcom bust that followed the '94-'95 land grab. The survivors remember the financial bloodbath that resulted from that bidding war, and are unlikely to spend so profligately again. The principle of supply and demand strongly suggests that declining air-time prices are symptoms of excess capacity. Why would the telcoms pay billions for more, when they need huge discounts to sell what they already have?
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Prove it. I think you "typically" generalize without two facts to stand on.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
But when we DO help them [something contradictory to above]
This particular posting doesn't out-and-out accuse We Slashdotters of hypocrisy, but that's the strong implication. How can anyone be so stupid to accuse a group of people of hypocrisy, especially a group claiming no political or ideological uniformity of its members?
Yes, there's probably a plausible explanation, but I don't really care. The 'you guys said one thing before and another thing later and the moderators agreed, you all are hypocrites' argument is retarded.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:2, Insightful)
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses [wikipedia.org] )
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:2, Insightful)
By way of facts, which line in the Forbes article says billionaires didn't start out rich? Unless we are reading different articles, this says that most of the recent billionaires were made by virtue of "bullish world stock markets, a weak dollar and surging commodity and real estate prices." The last factor, entrepreneurialism, is given one example. That ain't saying a whole lot.