WASHINGTON –- Though a U.S. House panel joined its Senate counterpart Wednesday in agreeing to flip a 2009 switch on digital broadcasting, much remains in question.
The precise date,
the exact cost and the absolute certainty of the digital television
transition are issues that stand between the two entities as they search for a resolution.
As with all federal budget reconciliation bills, though, everything and
anything is negotiable.
The House says the job to clear television broadcasters out of their current
analog spectrum, as well as auction off the beachfront airwaves to wireless
broadband providers, can be done for $1.5 billion and be complete by Jan. 1, 2009.
An auction for the spectrum is expected to garner $10 billion to $30 billion from companies anxious to build a broadband alternative to DSL and cable-modem providers.
The House estimates the costs involved in raising the money include a nearly $1 billion
consumer subsidy for digital signal converter boxes and $500 million in
interoperability gear for public-safety agencies that will also receive a
slice of the coveted spectrum.
“Thursday, Jan. 1, 2009, will be the day America goes all digital,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) proclaimed. “The
analog television signals that have come into our homes over the air since
the birth of TV will end the night before. A great technical revolution that has been in the making for years will finally be complete.”
But senators favor April 7, 2009, as a date certain for the DTV
transition. They want to increase the converter box subsidies to $3 billion. The
equipment needed to meet the 911 Commission’s recommendation for first-responder support, the Senate thinks, should be $1.2 billion.
The three-month difference in deadlines, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Ala.) explained last week, gives broadcasters one last
chance to reap some final analog profits before skipping off to digital
land.
“That’s after the NCAA finals, after the football games, after the holidays.
Everybody says you just can’t make this happen at a time when there’s some
really important part of the communications media being exercised” Stevens
said.
Well, not exactly everybody.
Wednesday, Barton dismissed Stevens’ concerns over maximizing broadcasters’
profits, telling reporters a Jan. 1 date “just makes sense. It’s the end of
one year and the beginning of another.”
The small difference in drop-dead dates, however, pales in comparison to the
differences in consumer subsidies.
Barton’s House version slices more than $2 billion from Stevens’ plan.
Democrats on the House panel criticized the subsidy as not being enough and
unfair to the poor.
“What if the government were to turn off everyone’s phone and then said it
will cost $60 each to have service turned back on,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)
asked. “Ninety-nine percent of U.S. consumers have no idea that their analog
sets will go dark in three years.”
Markey added that the subsidies still require Americans to co-pay for a
converter box, calling the payments a “TV tax.”
Even within his party, Barton faced some opposition on the subsidies.
Indiana Republican Steve Buyer said in a time of deficit crisis, lawmakers
shouldn’t be spending money on better television reception.
Buyer proceeded to introduce an amendment to eliminate all subsidies, an
idea that was defeated but not before nine other Republicans voted for the
amendment.
Barton must now sell his bill to the House as a whole. Stevens faces the
same challenge in the Senate. Then, differences between the two chambers
will have to reconciled.
