Maine voters in November will consider a bond issue for $9.4 million to help Maine Public Broadcasting convert to digital TV transmission. This is not the brainchild of the good folks at MPBN, but an unfunded mandate from Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

All TV stations must begin digital transmission by 2002 or risk losing their license to broadcast. The expected cost to the commercial and public TV stations alone is in the neighborhood of $20 billion, never mind the cost consumers must bear by purchasing a digital television or a converter box. That’s a lot of money for a clearer TV picture. MPBN estimates it needs about $22 million to meet the mandate, not including about $2 million a year above its normal budget for related costs.

For the last five years, some members of Congress have tried to severely reduce or eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the national parent of public television. Suddenly, and largely as a result of the Columbine shootings, many in Congress now see public TV as the nonviolent alternative to commercial TV. The House Telecommunications Committee has just passed on to the full House a spending authorization bill that would provide $749 million over five years to public broadcasting for the digital conversion.

Committee chairman Billy Tauzin (D-La.) pointed out that Congress should help with the digital TV conversion in fairness to state legislatures which have had to pick up the cost so far. Such a bill, if passed, would go a long way toward funding Maine Public Broadcasting’s need.

Depending, of course, on what that technology is, because as of this week the basic hardware to send and receive digital TV signals is in doubt. Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns 59 commercial TV stations, is demonstrating in Baltimore that there are severe problems in receiving a clear picture in apartment and office buildings in urban areas using the present industry standards.

They advocate a change in technology that would cost each TV station about $50,000. But Robert Graves, a spokesman for the organization that sets TV broadcast standards, argues that the problem is significantly more complex and would require three additional years of testing and analysis.

All of this means that Maine voters will be asked to make informed choices about an expensive system for which there is little reliable information. Before local public television stations are forced to spend millions of taxpayer dollars, they need either a huge information campaign to straighten out this confusion or a petition to the federal government to push back the date that all of this is supposed to happen. The latter might be more effective.