Kill Your Television — January, 2008
Now don't be alarmed, but there's a chance your television will stop working properly on February 17th, 2009.1 This is the moment when the federal government has decided to mandate the end of broadcasting plain-Jane television signals in the plain-Jane band of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum. The FCC is going to sell off this part of the EMR spectrum for other uses. And though I haven't heard definitively what it will be used for, I don't reckon they're going to use it to broadcast audio books. In any event, if you aren't using a cable or sattelite television connection on this day, your TV is going to stop working.
Now for this next part, you are allowed to be alarmed. The FCC is concerned about households losing access to television. Ostenisbly, if American Idol ratings decline too much, the whole U.S. economy could descend into a dark abyss and Steinbeck may write another tome with entire chapters devoted to turtles crossing the road. And this appears to scare the federal government. So $1.5 Billion is being set aside to fund a coupon program allowing people to more affordably purchase converter boxes for their precious household televisions.2
There are two things about this logic that scare me. I've recently made a few trips to my local library and have been disappointed to find it closed on Sundays. And Monday through Friday it closes at 5:00 PM, making it impossible for many people to take advantage of the library on any day but Saturday. Additionally, I've driven past many a public park lately and have found the playground apparatus on many of them to be in disrepair.
Now I don't know about you, but I'd rather our billions of tax dollars were being used to improve the hours at our local libraries or equip our community parks than to subsidize television converter boxes. The people relying on plain-Jane broadcast television aren't getting The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, or The Learning Channel anyway. So beyond ensuring these households receive innacurate weather forecasts and award-winning local newscasts about world record homing pigeons, I see no real public value in subsidizing broadcast television. Things of real public value—like literacy, the development of youthful curiosities, and preventing kids from the plague of obeisity—are not found on television, folks. They're found on the shelves of libraries and the monkey bars of parks.
I know it's been said before, but I'll accept being trite and say it again: kill your television. Go outside and run around. And when you get tired, sit down at the library with anything Steinbeck's written except Grapes of Wrath. You'll enjoy it.
~ topher
2: Castle, K. Television Going to All-Digital Format in 2009. www.timesnews.net. January 13, 2008.
3: Gardiner, B. Government Doles Out $40 Coupons for DTV Conversion. Wired News. January 2, 2008.