Tell Me More, Tell Me More

The New York Times informs us that people are still fretting over the upcoming DTV transition.  Will everyone be aware? Will they know what to do? This is a TV emergency!

As I’ve noted before, there’s already plenty of money being spent to fund education efforts. Here’s what I wrote back in March in response to a similar story in the Post:

Now, I tend to think that there’s no reason to subsidize access to broadcast TV in the first place. But setting that aside, maybe it would be fair to complain about the switch — except that there’s already a billion-dollar plus federal subsidy already in place (and one that’s hugely wasteful in who it subsidizes at that). And I might be more sympathetic to worries about confusion amongst the elderly—the story reports that 73 percent of older consumers aren’t aware of the subsidy—if the transition weren’t still almost a year away, and broadcasters and cable companies hadn’t committed roughly $1.2 billion to explaining the transition to customers, and the FCC hadn’t already set aside $2.5 million to start their education efforts and requested $20 million more.

It’s not like there’s not a substantial amount of money, taxpayer and private, being spent to make sure that a relatively small number of people keep receiving a few channels on their aging TV sets. It’s irritating, but probably politically necessary, that much of this money had to be spent at all, but the benefits from the spectrum it releases are almost certainly worth it. But as it stands, I’m not really sure what else anyone thinks ought to be done.

And, as Tim Lee notes over at TLF, "going for a few days with no television just isn’t an emergency." Quite so.