It will come as a shock to very few that the United States has been planning for quite some time to stop broadcasting  analog television signals. With analog out of the way, all televisions in the United States will soon be digital. Radio and TV commercials featuring celebrities have made it clear that the change is inevitable, though the switch date has changed.

Say goodbye to analog TV. Photo Credit: Beige Alert via Flickr

Originally scheduled to occur on Feb. 17, the national transition to digital broadcast television  has been pushed back to June 12 in accordance with the DTV Delay Act  recently signed by President Obama. This new date has been set to accommodate the millions of Americans who still need to upgrade their older television sets with adapters or purchase newer televisions. Nearly 17.7 percent of American households have only analog television sets. The government funding set up to assist people in adapting their televisions for the DTV switch ran out in early January, with 3.7 million homes remaining on a waitlist to receive coupons.

While the delay benefits some viewers, many television stations are afraid the revised transition date could created most costs for them. Transmitting programming in both digital and analog until June 12 will place a significant burden on the budgets of broadcasters. Additionally, many stations worry their analog transmitters are getting old and may not last until June, and can’t afford to replace them.
Because of the burden the new date places on broadcasters, the government is allowing stations to apply to the Federal Communications Commission for a waiver to turn off their analog transmitters earlier.

In a letter, Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps noted that 143 stations have already requested and have been granted the authority to turn off their analog signals.

Various countries including Finland and Sweden have already made the DTV switch, but most made the switch on a much slower schedule, switching over small areas one at a time. This allowed countries to handle localized problems before moving to the next area and to learn from those problems. The United States will not have that opportunity as it plans to conduct the analog television switch to digital television across the entire nation at once. Other countries have yet to make the DTV switch, but many have plans to eliminate analog television in the near future.

Both analog and digital television use naturally occurring broadcast spectrum to transmit programming.  But digital signals are condensed and take up less spectrum than analog. The freed-up spectrum from the pending transition has already been auctioned off to private companies, raising more than $19 billion for the government.

Although the DTV switch has been placed on pause in some places, the transition, and the commercials, will continue to usher in a new era of broadcasting.

Written by Kelley Baskins, 3L