Digital Television Inequalities

I found a very interesting article in the Badger Herald written in 2002 that gives a very pessimistic look at the digital television switch.  The opinions and facts in this article are from a time when digital television sets were very expensive compared to analog sets.  The digital programming which was said to be 4 times higher resolution quality was very unfamiliar to most people at the time.  A few UW professors are quoted in the article saying how "absurd" they think the digital television switch would be, although they did not seem to understand the switch completely.  They seemed to be under the assumption that every home in America would be required to buy a digital television set to receive programming; a digital set at that time was close to $800 for a low-end brand.  In reality, anyone with cable television would not need to take any action to keep their programming and anyone with an analog set could get a government coupon for a digital tuner at a significant discount.

Despite being outdated, this article offers many problems that still exist today at the brink of the analog/digital switch.  While it sounded simple in theory for the average analog owner to upgrade their set inexpensively, the switch is still a great expense to low-income families.  A more recent article in the Palm Beach Post gives many situations of single-parent families making less than $300 dollars per week that cannot afford a digital tuner much less a new television.  This is a problem for them as well as the U.S. legislation that must keep delaying the switch that was originally scheduled for late 2007.  The country will not be required to make the switch until at least 85% of U.S. households have at least one digital set.  Many news stations that were ready for the digital conversion for over a year have stopped broadcasting analog signal because had cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars more per month to broadcast both signals.  This switch left many viewers who were not ready for the switch without a working set. These news stations have also been on the losing side with the average digital hardware cost being around $500,000 dollars per station and the loss of viewers who did not make the transition as soon as the station did.  The problems raised by the digital transition hurt mainly the low-income families who cannot afford the switch which strips them of what has become a necessity for anyone who wants to keep up with news and culture affordably.