Rabbit Ears

As anyone who, in the last six months, has had their TV on for more than the time it takes to watch a sitcom re-run knows, this February, the nation converts to all-digital broadcasts.

Ta-ta, to those analog signals of yester-year. So long to those  blow-down aluminum contraptions on the roof. Bye-bye, rabbit ears. If you don't have cable or satellite, and you still want to see what's out there in the wasteland, as of February 17th, you'll need a converter box if you want to watch CSI or The Biggest Loser on your old B&W Philco, Admiral, or Muntz.

In truth, until those ads started running, I hadn't realized how many people there are out there who still don't have cable. I guess I've just gotten so used to constant access to shows like Mad Men and The Sopranos, to being able to watch every last Red Sox game, to scrolling through hundreds of channels in hopes of finding something on, I'd forgotten that it wasn't all that long ago that TV was ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and a bunch of two-digit "UHF" channels - and not much else.

Naturally, those who don't have cable/satellite are, for the most part, those who are rural (in un-cabled territory with a last mile, or hundred mile, problem) and/or those who can't afford to pay a premium for TV watching.

So this switch to digital is no doubt going to result in some loss for those who fall on the wrong side of the digital divide. (Of course, not having access to the Internet is one thing, not having TV is another. This divide promises to be even wider than the Internet gap, even if it impacts fewer people.)

But, as the ads have been telling us, the government is here to help. It's been promising consumers $40 coupons to help with the cost of the converter boxes that those with old-style TV sets will need in order to receive those new-fangled digital signals. (Even being able to receive these signals doesn't help with the potential for losing those signals. Unlike analog signals, digital signals don't just fade out with distance - as in the old days, we could get the Manchester, NH TV station, but weak and fuzzy - but have a tendency to just drop off - as in the cell-phone dropped-call effect.)

I remember, of course, the days of the TV antenna. I can't remember if the same guy who repaired your TV (in our case, our neighbor Joe May) also took care of the antenna on your roof, but they were both in need of regular care and feeding. And then there were rabbit ears. Did they replace or augment the aluminum monstrosities on the roof? I've forgotten entirely.

The family rabbit ears had a brown plastic base, some kind of turning knob, and a pair of aerials. They worked - sort of. Sometimes you had to wave them around, hold them in the air, or attach tin foil to the tips. Occasionally, they needed a more radical boost. I remember my father trying to watch a Patriots game broadcast by Channel 6 in New Bedford. This was in the days when the Patriots were really small-time, and New Englanders mostly rooted for the NY Football Giants, whose games were shown on ABC, or some "real" network. Anyway, my father wanted to see this game, and the only way he could get it to come in was to pile encyclopedias around the base of the TV, and to station several of his kids at a few strategic locations near the encyclopedias. The game still came in as if it were being played in a blizzard. Perhaps it was. But you never knew in the old days, given how much fuzz and snow there was during a not atypical TV viewing outing.

I suspect that, decoder boxes or no decoder boxes, TV reception for the have nots (or the will nots: those who place so little value on television that they don't bother with cable or satellite, even though they can well afford it) will be less than perfect come February 17th.

And, of course, to make matters worse - and in the current economic climate, everything seems to make matters worse, doesn't it - the government has run out of money with which to subsidize the purchase of the digital converter boxes.

This I saw in an article yesterday in The Boston Globe, where it was reported that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (part of the Department of Commerce):

...announced that it has run out of funding, even as consumers continue to apply for coupons. New applicants are being put on a waiting list and will be contacted if more funds become available.

Okay, most people can probably manage to come up with the $50 or so it will cost to get a converter box, although certainly for those eking out a meager existence (small fixed income, no work), this is a lot of money.

Still, the government's failure to deliver on its promise of help with defraying an expense that doesn't particularly benefit the average person who needs to make the conversion is a pretty dismal one.

Not exactly a catastrophe along the lines of Katrina, but can't we get anything right?

Just what our new president needs in his first month in office, eh?

Financial meltdown, high unemployment, the Israeli crisis, war on two fronts, the last of the glaciers in Glacier National Park.....All that's not enough? We have to add on a couple of million poor folks who won't be able to watch TV?

Stay tuned!