The February 17 deadline for TV stations to switch over to digital broadcasting is fast approaching. Now we’re hearing that the program to issue the $40 coupons for people who have antenna TV, and thus will need the converter boxes, is in trouble. The program is out of money, and many people won’t get the converters by the drop-dead date.
No surprise here. Really, could this Rube Goldberg program have been set up any more ineptly? First, you “apply” for your discount; even if you did so when the discount cards first became available, you found that there was a six to eight week wait…for what? How could the process possibly take so long in the digital age? Who needs this credit-card-type doohickey they send you? Wouldn’t a rebate system, where people could buy their converters and get money back afterward, serve the purpose better and faster?
The biggest blunder was totally mishandling the publicity for the program. People don't care about the date of the changeover; what they need to know is when they need to do something. So in this case, the responsible agency (the Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration) should have set and publicized a clear deadline to apply for these coupons – a date determined by back planning from the conversion date to include the long wait for the coupon, buying the converter, and hooking it up. After the deadline, sorry, you would pay the full cost of the box yourself.
Well, that didn’t happen. It can be argued that the poor are disproportionately affected by the failure (compassionate conservatism at work). Obama wants to postpone the change, but that would just multiply cost and confusion. It doesn’t seem too late, even now, to establish a rebate arrangement; the agency has records of those who already got their discounts, so they wouldn’t need to pay double for anyone.
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