Spurned once, the Senate again passes bill to delay DTV transition
Earlier this week, the U.S. House of Representatives killed a bill passed by the Senate that would have delayed the DTV transition date from February 17 -- a mere 19 days from now -- to June 12. JDTVB has supported, and will continue to support, the February 17 date. As originally written into law, the transition was supposed to happen in 1999, or whenever 85% of television households were ready. The best numbers I've been able to come up with indicate that 94 to 95% are now prepared. However, President Obama believes we should wait for the lazy 5% who aren't. I disagree. Those of us who took the initiative, paid attention to the thousands of crawls, TV spots and other information and have already taken the steps necessary to maintain our TV signal should not be forced to wait for the handful who haven't. Nor should stations who've invested millions in converting be forced to continue operating two signals. Their electric bills alone would stretch into the millions of