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Congress Pays You $3 Billion to Keep Watching TV
Felix the Cat writes "After budgets cuts led to the layoff of engineers and scientists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a US Senate committee has approved a $3 billion dollar subsidy to assist Americans in their difficult transition to digital television in 2009. The old analog television spectrum will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The transition date was chosen to not interfere with college football bowl games or basketball playoffs." From the article: "The draft of a House bill would end analog transmissions on Dec. 31, 2008. It does not mention a subsidy for set-top converter boxes. So, lawmakers will likely have to work out differences between the two bills, though Stevens said he did not anticipate a big fight with the House over the deadline or the subsidy."
I know this won't be popular with our crowd, but really it isnt a bad decision. From the article: "The subsidy program would be paid for by money raised from the auction of the analog spectrum the broadcasters are vacating.". So basically, they are making an expected 3 billion for making old TVs not work, so it only seems fair to use the money they took to make old tvs not work to make them work.
I have a hard time believing that they'll really end analog TV in 2008. There are too many people out there who (a) have low incomes, (b) like TV, and (c) vote. It's just that many of those same people don't know about this because they get their information from the TV news. This is supposedly going to happen smack dab in an election year, too.
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We are paying for this. The $3 billion is coming from the tax payers. The funny thing is, it's really the TV industry that forced us to pay for this ourselves, automatically via taxes.
Will any of this subsidy affect my $1.99 Lost episodes?
There is truth in humor.
While I must say I really enjoy the editorialization in the summary (not), the submitter has no idea wtf he's talking about in regards to the financing of this project.
The digital TV transition is intended to free up the 700-800 Mhz (appx) spectrum to be auctioned by the FCC for advanced services and for use by public safety organizations. McCain made a big deal of the digital transition after Katrina hit due to the problems with interagency communication.
The $3 billion in subsidy comes from the auction of the spectrum. The people who will eventually pay for it are the users of the spectrum or customers of the companies who purchase the spectrum. Let me be clear, this $3 billion isn't coming from some other agency or program, it is coming from the proceeds of the auction.
So, submitter, if you're going to flame bait about your pet project being cut back at least do it with half a clue.
Things like HDTV and multicasting are nice side effects of the transition, but don't be fooled, this is mostly about money. Congress wants that money in its coffers and had planned for analog turn off at the end of this year when the transition first started ten years ago.
For those interested in a brief history of HDTV, here it is:
Here's how it went:
Broadcast Industry asks for bandwidth for HDTV
FCC says "OK, we'll set aside bandwidth for HDTV"
FCC says "What standards?"
Industry says 'No Standards Please' and come up with EIGHTEEN recommended formats for HDTV. I am not shitting you.
FCC says "Isn't 18 different standards a bit much?"
Industry says "Shut the fuck up FCC, we know what we are doing. The 'market' will handle this!"
Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!"
FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth."
Industry says "What? We really just want the free bandwidth. You really want us to do HDTV??
Congress says "Fuck you Industry. Broadcast HDTV or we'll legislate your asses back to Sun-day!"
Industry says "We're fucked. 18 formats? Why the hell did we do that? Let's change it."
Consumer Electronics dudes say "You ain't changing shit. We are already building the boxes you said you wanted built."
FCC says "Yah, ya boneheads we told you 18 was too many, now you gotta live with it."
Industry says "Well FCC, will you at least make the cable companies carry the HDTV at no charge?"
Cable companies say "Fuck you! You gotta pay! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"
FCC says "Yep, no federal mandated on HDTV must carry, we are letting 'the market' handle that"
Industry says "We are so fucked. We are spending 5-10 million per TV station in hardware alone and have 1000 HDTV viewers per city, even in LA!"
Consumer at home says "Where is my HDTV? Why does it cost so much? Fuck it, I'm sticking with cable/DirecTV."
Consumer electronics dudes, broadcast industry, FCC, and congress all cry. Cable companies laugh and make even bigger profits.
Iraq costs $6 BILLION each month.
--
make install -not war
From the article;
"The subsidy program would be paid for by money raised from the auction of the analog spectrum the broadcasters are vacating."
"The sale of the analog spectrum is expected to raise at least $10 billion. Besides the $3 billion for converter boxes, the Senate bill proposes reserving $1 billion for public safety to buy new radio communications equipment and $250 million for a national alert system. Another $5 billion would be set aside for debt reduction."
Now can we get back to our regular dose of Google/iPod stories?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I think the government is affraid that without TV's the public will develop critical thinking skills and start thinking for themselves. And critical thinking skills is not something the government would want the people to have.
This is necessary to hold the country together. Imagine the economic turmoil that would result if millions upon millions of people were to decide that $50 is too much to pay to continue watching TV and dump their boxes instead? All those souls, no longer absorbing advertisements? The reduction in impulse buying could throw us into another depression!
Actually, from the proposals I've heard about, the money will come from the auctioning of the reclaimed spectrum for other uses, which should generate a LOT more money than $3B.
How about CONSUMERS pay for new TVs or converters themselves? They don't get cable free.
But we do get OTA broadcasts for free, the converters ain't cheap, and digital television requires a strong signal, which most of us can't get with those $20 rabbit ears. I get 17 channels on my 10 year old TV for free. Many channels are snowy, but watchable. A poor-quality digital signal is like watching a scratched DVD.
And as for cable & satellite, most consumers will end up buying the converters-- either by paying directly, or through added hidden fees from the television provider. "The box is free, but there's a $100 service charge".
how about the fucking TELEVISION INDUSTRY do the subsidizing, instead? Why in the fucking hell should tax money go toward it?
Because the government is forcing the television broadcasters to give up their portion of the analog spectrum, in favor of the new Digital standard. Even if Digital Television does reach 85% of American households, few companies would willingly lose 15% of their audience-- nobody is willing to take the first jump, which is why the FCC is mandating an end date to all broadcasters at once.
I agree with you. The whole thing is stupid, but it's just one more item in a long list of $5000 HDTVs and consumers who pay $100 to watch commercials.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The old TVs won't be useless if you get a digital tuner, which is one thing being considered for those that can't buy one for themselves. The tuner can automatically scale the picture to the TV in question. Unless the TV was total garbage anyway, the picture will likely be better even on an NTSC TV because digital TV doesn't have snow, static or ghosting that mar analog NTSC broadcasts. I've had a digital tuner for a while, it's pretty darn nice looking even for "just" 480i output, it'll look just like a DVD does on the same set.
Obviously, you've never actually seen an HF television transmitter.
They're quite large, and require copious amounts of electricity, which they turn into two things:
1. A TV signal that will step all over newly-assigned public emergency frequencies.
2. Heat, which you will ostensibly be paying "teh big bux" for.
Perhaps you should revisit your intentions.
How about CONSUMERS pay for new TVs or converters themselves? They don't get cable free. They don't get a free CD palyer(sic) when cassettes go out of style.
The government didn't destory all cassette tapes six years after the CD player was first sold to the public, now did they?
CONSUMERS have already paid billions of dollars for televisions that work perfectly fine with free over the air analog signals. The government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that free over the air analog signals should disappear, instantly making all of that equipment obsolete unless a digital converter box is installed. The government, in its infinite wisdom, has also decided that it will sell/lease this signal space for billions of dollars to private enterprise, with some fraction reserved for public service use.
It seems perfectly reasonable for the government to dedicate a portion of the revenues that it will realize with this giant electromagnetic spectrum swap to compensate CONSUMERS who couldn't care less about free over the air digital television verses free over the air analog television.
And if someone MUST baby the consumer, how about the fucking TELEVISION INDUSTRY do the subsidizing, instead? Why in the fucking hell should tax money go toward it?
Read the above. The purchasers of the old free over the air analog spectrum are in effect subsidizing the conversion. It's only "tax money" if you ignore this major detail.
If we're going to spend billions of tax dollars on televisions, let's spend it subsidizing people to NOT own them?
Because this is a democracy, and the "we don't even own a television" portion of the population has even less political power than PETA.
Seriously, we already fucking subsidize breeders and marriage.
Economic and political trends in Western Europe and Japan both show why subsidizing the "breeders" is a sound economic policy. I'm not even touching the comment on marriage.
Where do I go for the nearest de-education center so I can join the mind-numbed consumer masses?
As a married man with a child, a graduate engineering degree, a law degree, and a television, I officially invite you to go for (sic) the nearest tall building and take a flying leap. You don't need a de-education center, since your prior education seems to have failed to instill any sort of critical reasoning ability.
I'm already waaaay ahead of you, my friend. My idea is better...I got rid of my television outright.
Last year, I sold my NTSC television (36" Sony Trinitron) on eBay for $200 with pedestal. I figure I was out about $1000 over the 6 years I owned it.
Guess what I did next?
Wrong. I didn't replace it. My wife and I have no television. No ads. None of the soundbytes. No cable bill. No TiVo bill. No MythTV Mayhem. No equipment to keep thinking about upgrading. No worries about the broadcast flag. Nobody trying to push my buttons over the screen.
All that and more free space in my living room for the couch.
The funny thing is...we don't really miss TV and that gives us time to pursue other things. We'll catch a glimse of a show or a movie on the tube if we're out with friends or whatnot, but that's about it. Even then, most of the time we just turn the thing off.
We have survived our first year without a television in the house (as of 10/10!) and our lives have become much more enriched as a result.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Amen, brother. When I went to college in 1980 I couldn't afford a TV of my own (I recall them being expensive, $300 in 1980 dollars, and besides since I left a girl back home I had to save all my dough to spend on phone bills). So I just stopped watching it. Haven't since. Not a "statement" or moral choice -- just never found enough time or desire, I suppose.
So that'll be 25 years without watching the tube come September. Only problem is the odd looks when I completely miss TV-culture references. Like Mr. or Dr. Steinfeld and some show about friends ("Friends"?). Means nothing to me. Nor have I seen any "Star Trek" shows since the original, although I do understand that there are about eleventy-two subvarieties of it now, with talking robots and stuff.
I've considered explaining I've just returned from twenty years in the Australian outback, but I can't do the accent.
The article summary says:
This is simply not the case. If you read the FCC's FAQ on the subject of digital television (which is what this is about, incidentally -- the FCC is mandating digital, but not high-def, which is only part of digital), you will see this:
This means that the new digital channels are being assigned to 6 MHz channels within the existing analog TV spectrum. In other words, they are just shuffling things around within the same spectrum. Analog TV is 6 MHz for one channel, and so is digital. (Digital can have subchannels, but that is part of the protocol, not something the FCC worries about after they've assigned the 6 MHz bandwidth to a TV station.)
So, are they actually taking away any of the analog spectrum? Yes, they are taking part of it away -- a very small part. They are taking away channels 52-69. The FCC's FAQ says this:
Translation: they are going to try to eventually move every channel which is in the 52-69 range down into the 2-51 range. They are leaving 2-51 available for television, and they are trying to reclaim 52-69.
So, is this a good thing? Well, how many TV stations do you know of that are in the 52-69 range right now? There are very few. It's a part of the spectrum that isn't used for TV much right now as it is anyway. So in a way, the FCC is basically taking this opportunity to clean out this little-used part of the spectrum.
If you want to go into a little more detail, check out this Adobe PDF spectrum chart. Look at the 300MHz-3GHz line, and look at the "TV BROADCASTING" section after the one that denotes channels 21-36. You'll see that it goes from 614Mhz to 698MHz, and since all TV channels are 6 MHz bandwidth, that means 84/6 = 14 channels. This means it goes with channels 37-50 (the next 14 channels after 21-36). And then look after that on the chart. You'll see that 698MHz through 806MHz is allocated for "BROADCAST" but also for "FIXED" and "MOBILE" purposes. So apparently it's not 100% dedicated to television right now. So the FCC is right to say that range (channels 50 and higher) is not part of the "core" spectrum.
Anyway, even if you don't agree that we should give up the part of 52-69 that is allocated to television (because apparently not all of it is), it's still important to note that the FCC is not auctioning off ALL of the analog TV spectrum. Actually, there are 68 channels total, and it would seem they are only auctioning off 18 of them, and part of those 18 channels aren't even allocated to TV in certain areas right now, so it's less than 18 channels. So, at worst, they are auctioning off 18/68 = 26.5% of the analog TV spectrum, and they are leaving exactly 50 broadcast television channels available.
auction spectrum = still your governments dollars.
auctioned spectrum = BAD, unless its in lease form. I loathe that big businesses pay big bucks one time and profit forever off it. Govt should get a cut of profits generated by that spectrum forever.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
On the plus side I will say that the level of transparency of corruption is much higher than I've encountered elsewhere in the world and you, usually, don't get killed for investigating who bought which politician, which I've seen before.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
What amazes me even more are all those people who insist on their right to bear arms to defend themselves from tyranny but never even kill a single corrupt politician with them.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The conversation around the dinner table thing only works until you find out that your son is gay, your daughter a democrat, and your wife cares about black people.
When TV gets turns off, expect a jump in the domestic violence rate.
Humor us. What are the appreciable differences?
They were both strongly in favor of invading Iraq. And staying in Iraq. Are you suggesting that Kerry would have done the responsible thing and try to institute the Draft? Would that reknown leader of men convince the Congress to vote for such a measure? If so, why couldn't Kerry ever sponsor and pass a piece of significant legislation?
Are their border control policies different? Would Kerry beef up the border security, increase deportations, institute guest worker visas, and increase convictions of business owners that hire illegal immegrants?
Has Kerry helped push any legislation would show he understands the onerous cost of the federal gov't?
Face it. The boys at the top picked someone who wasn't going to upset the apple cart. And until THOSE losers are booted out of power, no matter what loser the Republicans put up, the Democrats will put up another loser.
And finally, we live in a country of dumbasses who vote, and dumbasses who don't vote. Until you can fix them, they'll be voting for "a Bush" every time.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
You must have watched different debates than I did. I came away hating both candidates. Bush is a simple manager that leans heavily on his "experts", and can't think on the fly to save his life; Kerry is a carreer politician who will say anything to anyone to get elected. We need to take the caucus/primary power away from those notheastern small states. Dean could have solidly beat Bush, if he hadn't "scared" those poor farmers with his scream.
I voted for Kerry, but it was the most distateful vote I have ever cast.
It wasn't an obvious call by any means, and I'm not surprised that people were conflicted. Trying to pick between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum isn't fun.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
How does this get modded up? Does it occur to you that some people in America are smart, watched the debates, and chose to support Bush? I, for one, have a brain, watched the debates, and voted for Bush because I thought he would make a good president.
Same here. I'm smart, pretty well informed, watched the debates, and voted for Bush.
You know, it's possible for someone to see the same facts as you and interpret them differently. That doesn't imply stupidity on either part, just different perspectives.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The most basic difference for most Kerry voters, I think, was not what would be done but what had been done. It's actually not unreasonable for Kerry to have chosen to stay in Iraq; it's a mess that the US made and which arguable we should try to clean up after ourselves. If we didn't, future deaths resulting from a civil war in Iraq would be blamed on us (not to mention a potential new safe haven for al Qaeda).
But the difference is that Bush HAD gone into a war, under what many prospective Kerry voters considered false pretenses, and for that he deserved to lose his office, even if his policies for the future were exactly identical to Kerry's.
For example, Kerry might have been able to get foreign assistance in Iraq, not because his policies were better than Bush's, but because for many countries the answer would be an automatic "No" to Bush. They'd say Bush had brought it on himself, whereas Kerry would be trying to fix a situation he inherited. That's not a guarantee, but there was no hope of any world support under Bush.
Actually, that's not even the most basic difference. The most basic difference is in the Supreme Court. It was obvious that Bush would appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice, and that he would almost certainly chose an anti-Roe nominee, whereas Kerry would almost certainly chose a pro-Roe nominee. The way it turned out was somewhat more complicated, but at the time both sets of voters may have had abortion (and other things that the Supreme Court weighs in on) at the front of their minds.
There were numerous other policy differences: privatization of social security, concerns over Bush's pro-business style (in particular, the energy policy for which many Democrats feel Bush should be punished), environmental policies.
I'm not trying to debate what should be done in Iraq, or to favor one candidate or the other. I'm just saying that the presence of similarities between the two doesn't mean that there weren't also differences.
But one last bone I'll pick: not all senators are there to sponsor legislation. An awful lot of work goes on in Congress that doesn't get names on bills. The details of the bills are where serious work gets done, not in the overall thrust. A President is as much a negotiator as a policymaker, and being good at those back-room skills getting bills actually passed is at least as important as initiating legislation. John McCain, for example, is more respected for his ability to make the resulting legislation reasonable than for the bills that he himself has sponsored.
Again, I'm not using this to comment on the election itself or take a stand on who you should have voted for. I'm just saying that if you're not seeing any differences, and you're not seeing Kerry's accomplishments, then you need to look more closely.