EDUCATION: More spending on digital TV than Education

Next February, somewhere in America, someone out there is going to flip on his tube for some Law & Order: SVU and see nothing but fuzz. He'll probably grapple with his rabbit ears and pound the side of his aging CRT, but no amount of cajoling will bring back Ice-T's interrogation room or Richard Belzer's last unfunny stand. That's because on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009, the FCC will repossess the analog spectrum from the major television broadcasters and the networks will go all-digital.

Most of us get our television reception from either cable or satellite and will therefore be unaffected by the change—but 17 million U.S. households still rely upon analog, over-the-air broadcasts for their TV. If those viewers don't upgrade to digital televisions or purchase digital converter boxes, they will no longer be able to access standard broadcast channels (although many low-power UHF stations will continue on in analog).

The prospect of good, honest, television-loving Americans losing their signal has caused a lot of hand wringing of late. According to a January survey by the National Association of Broadcasters, 79 percent of Americans are aware of the transition. That number is up from 38 percent the previous year, but it still means that 21 percent of the citizenry has no clue that the country is about to go through a wrenching technological change with its most massive of mass mediums. A recent New York Times article cites a study estimating that 9 million households could lose one or more stations, even if they do get converters.

All this despite a huge information campaign and an incentive program that amounts to an investment by American taxpayers of up to $1.5 billion. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a division of the Department of Commerce, is offering 33 million coupons at $40 each toward the purchase of a converter box, with a maximum of two per household. (Amazon is currently selling a Sansonic FT300A, for example, at around $59, which would make the total cost to a consumer less than $20). Ironically enough, the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act was part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

That, to me, raises the question: Do Americans have a right to television? I asked this recently of spokespeople from the FCC, the NAB, and the NTIA and received reactions ranging from puzzlement to outright hostility.

The question is not meant to be cynical. There is, after all, a public-interest rationale for as many people as possible to have access to the television medium—in fact, it's the sheer number of people who have access to television that makes it such a powerful technology. According to Nielsen Media Research, 98.2 percent of American households have a television. By some measures, that even beats the penetration rate of basic adult literacy skills, which was last pegged in 2003 at 86 percent (to be sure, a comparison between households and individuals is inexact at best, but the statistic is still jarring). So when it comes to getting the word out for emergency alerts, public service announcements, news, election information and educational programming, there's no more effective distribution method.

Nevertheless, it would be naive to think that television's primary function in most households is as an emergency alert or learning tool. And it's illuminating to put the government's $1.5 billion allocation in perspective. Consider: The proposed 2009 federal budget for adult basic and literacy education is $574.6 million.

My point here is not to say that the federal government cares more about TVs than books—it's only to point out just how surprisingly important it currently seems to be to the nation's well-being that every American have TV access. It made me wonder if our elected officials are as concerned about ensuring that we all have access to broadband Internet. Turns out that there is a massive federal program to stimulate the growth of broadband—administered, oddly enough, by the Department of Agriculture, which through its Rural Development program has approved 85 loans totaling $1.68 billion since 2002 to help fund broadband infrastructure rollout in underserved areas.

Is nationwide availability of speedy Wikipedia queries as important as delivering Ryan Seacrest digitally to your living room? I leave that to you, dear readers, to decide.