Several years ago, the federal government decided that analog television signals were taking up too much valuable spectrum, so the feds decided to force TV broadcasters to move their signals to digital by February 17, 2009. Because digital broadcast allows spectrum to be more efficiently used, this would free up large chunks of spectrum to be used for other purposes, such as expanding wireless networks.
It is estimated that there are 20 million soon-to-be-obsolete TV sets in homes where people don't subscribe to either satellite or cable.
On that date, if you are one of those homes and you still trying to pick up TV signals with an analog television, your screen will go dark, or perhaps be tuned to a permanent public service announcement explaining what happened.
So, in order to free up this new spectrum, a lot of consumers (read: voters) are going to be much inconvenienced.
That's why the federal government has already planned to spend about $1.5 billion giving owners of obsolete analog TV sets $40 vouchers toward the purchase of converter boxes, though there is no guarantee that $40 will be enough to buy said converter.
All-in-all, a reasonable solution to an important policy priority of freeing up valuable spectrum. And the federal spending on the converter boxes would be more than offset by the funds raised through the spectrum auction.
Except that this week, when the FCC set the rules for the auction that will sell that newly-freed spectrum, instead of simply auctioning off the spectrum to the highest bidder, as has been the usual practice, the FCC has burdened the auction with rules that almost everyone agrees will lower the value of the spectrum, resulting in a lower net auction price.
So, let's review: The digital TV transition is costing Americans big bucks to buy new televisions, and is costing the federal government billions to pay for all those converter boxes. But that's justified because of the big money that is going to flow into the federal coffers from the auctioning of this new spectrum.
Except that the value of this spectrum has just decreased because of special new rules that the FCC has attached to the spectrum.
Did someone think this through?
Now, for the clincher: The new rules for the spectrum auction, which reduced the value of the spectrum, were attached to the auction at the request of (and for the benefit of) a single company--Google.
So Google--a $159 billion dollar company with over $12 billion cash sitting in the bank but that has never built a communications network--is shaping up to be the primary beneficiary of the DTV conversion, its inconveniences, and its subsidies, thanks to a special favor from the FCC, which apparently decided that there was a compelling federal interest in accommodating Google.
So, when your analog TV goes dark, or when you have to go out and buy a new television to keep it from doing so, just remember it's all for a good (not evil) cause.