Influential Legislation Affecting the Digital Transition

The digital transition period has been quite confusing for consumers, many people learned about the need to acquire digital converter boxes and the government DTV coupon program long after it ran out of funding to provide coupons for everyone who signed up. Many consumers were left unprepared for the digital transition. To address these problems, shortly after president Obama’s inauguration, congress passed two laws to literally buy some time for consumers to prepare for the digital transition.

The first important piece of legislation known as the DTV Delay Act pushed the transition date back from Feb 17th to June 12th; providing consumers a few extra months to prepare for the transition, whether they need to upgrade their antenna, or buy a converter box for their TV. There are a few exceptions to this new law, some stations were granted waivers by the FCC to allow them to transition into digital early, before June. The cost of broadcasting in analog and digital simultaneously for the extra months would cause these stations to go bankrupt trying to afford their power bill. The DTV Delay Act also slightly altered the rules of the DTV Coupon program, allowing consumers with expired coupons to get a second chance – one replacement coupon for each card that expired.

The second piece of legislation affecting the digital transition is the $787 billion dollar “economic stimulus package”. This law allocated an extra $650 million to the coupon program created to subsidize the cost of up to two digital converter boxes per household. The NTIA coupon program ran into funding limitations, and as it got closer to the transition date, more consumers were applying for cards than the coupon program could afford to send out. In order to ensure a smooth transition for low-income households the coupon program required more funding to continue issuing coupons. To compensate for such a high demand for coupons the NTIA created a waiting list for consumers to register under while waiting for cards to expire, freeing up unused coupon money. The coupon waiting list eventually got up to 4.2 million households before more money was finally allocated to the program.

Now that additional funding has been secured, they are processing applications as quickly as possible. Once the long queue of consumers on the waiting list has been processed, the NTIA will begin allowing people with expired coupons to re-apply for their second chance to use their $40 coupons.

Soon enough the headaches will be over. Everyone will be able to sit back, and enjoy free, over-the-air digital broadcasts, watching their favorite television programs with crystal-clear digital picture quality.