Obama asks Congress to delay digital TV switch

Reporting from Washington -- The transition to digital television next month has been hailed as the biggest advance in over-the-air TV since the advent of color, but it's shaping up as a black eye for the government and risks leaving millions of viewers without a picture.



On Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama asked Congress to postpone the federally mandated switch to all-digital broadcast television, called DTV, scheduled to take place Feb. 17.
The unspecified delay would give the government time to fix a consumer-help program that ran out of money this week. But it also would set back the long-promised benefits of digital TV, which offers sharper pictures and more free channels while opening valuable airwaves for public safety and wireless Internet access.

The government took in $19.6 billion last year by auctioning existing analog TV airwaves to telecommunications companies for new wireless services, but Congress allocated less than $2 billion to educate consumers about the transition and issue coupons to buy needed converter boxes.

Now an estimated 7.7 million households nationwide may find their screens going dark next month.


Although a delay is far from certain, given potential opposition from broadcasters, public safety agencies and telecom companies eager to start using those new airwaves, there was plenty of frustration Thursday with the way the digital TV transition has been managed.

"The list of who's to blame is long," said Joel Kelsey, a long-time critic of the transition as policy analyst with Consumers Union, which also called for a delay this week. "It was a giant miscalculation by our federal government."

Some lawmakers urged a delay to give the incoming administration more time to correct problems, but others thought the clamor for a postponement was "just panic." Some congressional leaders simply weren't ready to weigh in. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said the relevant committees were working with Obama's transition team to solve the problems. ......