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NMI’s David Alire Garcia interviewed a regional FCC official and the head of the New Mexico Media Literacy Project about the DTV transition yesterday for KNME’s New Mexico In Focus. Video courtesy of KNME-TV.
ALBUQUERQUE — “I need four coupons. Sorry I’m late, but I just came for the coupons,” said the man who came late to the community meeting Tuesday night about the impending digital TV transition.
Might as well join the other 2.5 million people who are currently on a waiting list to receive government-issued $40 coupons, Andrea Isabel Quijada of the New Mexico Media Literacy Project replied. The coupons are intended to subsidize the purchase of a digital transition converter box.
There are 2.5 million people on the list before you, Quijada explained, and there is no more money in the government fund to give coupons. “So,” she said, “if you don’t have a coupon and don’t have the money for this transition, you are shut out on Feb. 17.”
These are serious words — and as Quijada continued, the magnitude of the problem began to sink in.
Quijada moderated the community meeting at the Alamosa Community Center Tuesday night, at which two representatives of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) explained the conversion and answered questions. Or, in actuality, they fielded a lot of serious concerns and frustration.
After the transition, which is scheduled to occur February 17th, full-power TV stations will broadcast only in digital. So if you have an older analog TV and only watch free over-the-air television stations you’ll need to either purchase a converter box along with a digital antenna, or a new TV.
The nature of this process is that it primarily impacts lower-income people — those who rely on free over-the-air television, using rabbit ears. The transition won’t affect people who fork over a monthly fee for cable or satellite TV, or who have a newer TV with a built-in digital tuner.
Because the transition is a government mandate, every household is entitled to receive two government issued coupons that knock $40 off the price of a converter box, which will cost anywhere from $50 to $100. You’ll also most likely need a digital antenna, which will run you anywhere from $25 to $50.
Some estimates are that 8 million Americans are unprepared for the digital TV transition.
A Neilsen study found in December that Albuquerque is the least prepared media market among the top 56 media markets in the country, with 13 percent of households completely unprepared.
The problem is that the government is now out of money and there are no more coupons to help people with the costs related to the transition. As a U.S. Commerce Department Web site shows, all of the DTV transition funds for coupons — well over $1 billion — have been allocated, and there are 2.5 million coupon requests on a waiting list.
Plus, some people who ordered their coupons before they were no longer available haven’t received them or only received one.
For this reason, the Obama administration is calling for the transition date to be pushed back to June, but Congress hasn’t been obliging so far. The Senate passed a bill this week to do just that, moving the date to June 12, but the House voted down a similar bill today.
A majority of the House was in favor of the postponement, but they lacked the two-thirds needed, Kevin McDonald, public affairs producer at local PBS affiliate KNME, told the Independent.
In a statement released after the House Vote, U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján noted the Neilsen study showing how unprepared Albuquerque is for the transition, and said in light of the vote today — which he laid at the feet of Republicans — he would reach out to New Mexicans about the digital transition in the coming weeks.
McDonald added that he’s unsure what will happen next, but that he has “…a hard time believing it’s a completely dead issue. I would guess they will try to resurrect it somehow in the next week or so.”
Regardless of whether the date is postponed ultimately, the money to help people pay for their household transition has run out and confusion over what people are supposed to do is rampant.
For instance, while the DTV transition campaign has stressed the importance of people preparing for the transition so that on Feb. 17 their televisions “won’t go dark,” as it turns out some analog low-powered stations will still be broadcasting. And it appears that some local New Mexico stations will still send an analog signal into rural New Mexico.
KOAT Channel 7 has a Web page in which you can check by town to see if you need to get a converter box. A quick search on Eagle Nest, which is in rural northern New Mexico, shows that people who live there don’t have to do a thing:
“You don’t need to do anything right now. Your area will continue to be served, like it is now, by KOAT 7′s analog signal. The government has not yet decided when television stations must provide a digital signal to your area. Action 7 News and KOAT.com will let you know when our signal will change. The change is not likely to happen for several more years.”
Confusing? Yes, it’s confusing.
Quijada said media access advocates and organizations are calling for $650 million to be attached to the economic stimulus plan, so that the process of helping people pay for their converter boxes can continue between now and the transition date.
McDonald said there is currently another bill before the House still to be voted on that would add money for converter box coupons without delaying the deadline.
Even better, Quijada said, would be for the government to simply send every household the converter box they need in order to still have television after the transition.
Free media access is very important, Quijada argued. For many people, television is how they get the news and stay in contact with the outside world.
FCC spokesperson Dan Abeyta agreed, saying that he knows it’s a very serious concern because his own father relies on television news.
“It’s very serious,” Abeyta said. “My father only watches one hour a day — the news. He doesn’t listen to the radio or read papers. So if he can’t watch the news he’ll be deprived of critical information, so we understand the concern.”
And why is this conversion happening in the first place?
The official line is so that the analog spectrum can be freed up for use by public safety agencies, so that they can develop coordinated systems for communication during emergencies.
Abeyta said the push to free up the analog spectrum began in earnest after the 9/11 attacks.
“The primary reason is public safety going back to Sept. 11,” Abeyta said. “All the first responder agencies were on different frequencies and couldn’t communicate with each other. In light of those difficulties, Congress decided to make this analog spectrum available.”
Added to that reason, Abeyta said, was the awareness that the digital spectrum offered broadcasters a more efficient spectrum with a better picture and better sound.
But a commenter disputed this explanation, saying that the conversion was first discussed during the debate over the 1996 telecommunications bill. And, he pointed out, AT&T and Verizon Corporations had been sold large chunks of the analog spectrum to use for private profit.
Abeyta agreed that this was true, and made a point of saying that it was the Congress, not the FCC, that made the decision to put part of the analog spectrum up for auction to private entities.
For more information:
New Mexico Media Literacy Project
