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Obama Administration Urges Delay on DTV Switch

President-elect Obama’s DTV transition staff has found major difficulties in the digital TV transition set to take place Feb. 17. The co-chairman of the team, John Podesta, has asked Congress to consider a delay, saying the government funds supporting the change are “woefully inadequate.”

ABC and NBC also support a delay, while PBS frets that children in less-affluent homes that rely on free television would lose access to PBS educational shows for kids, writes The New York Times.

The news follows reports that demand for the government coupons for converter boxes that will allow old TVs to receive the new digital TV signals has been higher than expected, and that - at last count - over 100,000 consumers were on waiting lists to receive the coupons. Podesta’s letter to Congress said that the number of unfulfilled coupon requests could jump by hundreds of thousands per day. With “the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively mandated cutoff date,” he wrote.

Viewers that do not have a television able to receive digital signals and who do subscribe to a cable or satellite service will be unable to receive any TV signals after the switch. In December, Nielsen estimated that number at 7.8 million households.

Earlier this week, the Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) wrote to Congress, also arguing for a delay. Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst for the group, said in a release that, “The federal government is getting $19 billion from selling the analog TV spectrum, while people with analog TVs have to go out and spend their own money for a converter box. Everyone affected by the digital switch should be able to get their $40 coupons. Congress needs to consider delaying the transition until these problems are fixed.”