US Senate intros bill to keep people from falling off the "digital cliff"
By Steven Kim 
posted May 10th 2009 9:57PM
posted May 10th 2009 9:57PM
With less than 5-percent of US homes failing to make it under the analog shutoff limbo stick (and still a month to go), there's no reason that come June 12th a whole lot of stations won't be conducting their own shutoff festivities. Just to make sure that there won't be a pack of digital lemmings headed for a step function-like cliff, the US Senate has introduced the DTV Cliff Effect Assistance Act, which allocates $125 million through 2012 to help pay for digital repeaters and translators to fill in those areas that will go uncovered after the switch occurs. This is government money, so you know there's a few strings attached -- in this case, the new bits of infrastructure will also have to serve up wireless communications and broadband traffic where possible. Let's see -- more people with DTV and broadband wireless coverage? Add a tick in the "yes" column for us, please!
See every so often the government does something we all like
While it sounds great on the surface, you know the FCC will manage to screw this up somehow. Personally, I'd rather see them working harder to reorganize and maximize the existing broadcast frequencies we still have left than start jumping on the repeater bandwagon. I bet that 90% of the loss-of-service issues that will come 6/12 could be averted by an optimized frequency/power plan for the country's TV stations.
I've never understood why this hasn't been done. More than 33% of the TV spectrum will be freed up on June 12th when the full-power analogs disappear. Rather than reallocating full power DTV channels for maximum coverage, we're going to fill up that spectrum with repeaters? I live in what has to be one of the most 'busy' areas for TV, the Baltimore/Washington area, and the post-6/12 setup is rediculous. We have a MAJOR channel (WBAL, NBC Baltimore) getting absolutely crippled to something like 5kW on VHF 11 post-transistion here. They can't use more than 5kW (or whatever it is) because of potential interference issues. They can't stay on UHF 59 for DTV because that channel was sold to the highest bidder by the FCC. Maybe they desperately wanted to keep channel 11 becuase of their analog identity, but still ... 5kW?
We'll see, but I'm cynical at best here. lol
I fully agree I live near DC and will be losing all sorts of channels even some of the major ones , God help the people who live on the eastern shore and the west va part of the DC/Baltimore Metro Area they will be SOL even if they are completely ready for the switch