ATLANTA—About ninety percent of people know that TV signals are going digital on February 17. The ten percent who don’t know are hard to reach, and they risk being left with no signal when analog broadcasts cease, according to Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate. Tate visited Georgia Public Broadcasting on September 29 for a town hall meeting with broadcasters and community groups. She asked for their support and ideas about how to prevent anyone from being left without television when the change occurs. ‘The FCC has no money budgeted to inform people about the change,’ said Tate. She thanked broadcasters for making a billion dollars worth of public service announcements to get the word out.
Tate said the change will permit a dedicated shared channel for emergency responders, and allow greater bandwidth for portable electronic devices. The government has auctioned more than twenty billion dollars worth of bandwith for wireless devices.
Russ Dixon of the BlackAgenda.com said the FCC in 1996 represented the digital changeover as a way to provide free broadcast access for minorities and women. He said the FCC promised to make more channels available for free community broadcasts, yet that was no longer part of the digital rollout. He asked why. Commissioner Tate said she had ‘been busy having babies in 1996 and had not been part of that decision.’ Her task now was to get the word out about the need for converter boxes and the government coupons to subsidize the boxes.
Poor people, old people, and non-English speaking immigrants need support to make the needed change, said Tate. Gincarlo Ci Fuentes of Spanish broadcaster Univision said the station devised a ‘Digital Swat Team, collecting names of people with rabbit ears,’ and sending a crew to install free converters for the winners. They broadcast the installation, both informing people about the change and showing people how to make their TVs digital.
Chuck Barlow of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, is sending information to black churches. According to Barlow, old people in rural areas are likely to miss information about the change and to be unable to get and install the needed converter box. Church leaders may pass on the news and organize volunteers to help people with buying and installing the devices. His group is pairing students from technical colleges with churches, to arrange installation for older people.
Anyone with ‘rabbit ears” or a house antenna will need a converter box to get a digital signal, or a new television, or to subscribe to a cable service. The government will give each household up to two coupons for forty dollars each towards the cost of the box.
One would think households without cable would also be without internet literacy; nonetheless people are invited to apply for the coupon online at https://www.dtv2009.gov. One can also call 1-888-DTV-2009, or 1-877-530-2634 (English/TTY). Taylor said some retailers offer elaborate, costly boxes, but the coupons can cover the cost of an adequate one. Best Buy, Circuit city, Kmart, Radio Shack, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart all accept the coupons. So do many online retailers such as Amazon.