DIGITAL DEADLINE

Those who watch the television industry as much as they watch television itself will recall that about a decade ago, digital television was said to be on the way to enriching humankind’s experience with clearer pictures and new spectrum revenues. Digital television did arrive, slowly, in some markets, but not to the extent that either humankind or the federal coffers noticed. Congress has the opportunity to move this process along and should take it.

About 1,500 stations nationwide broadcast digitally but only a small fraction of viewers receive the digital signal. This is perhaps because so few people were worried about the quality of their television picture when the Federal Communications Commission and others began lamenting the inadequacies of analog. Viewers may have felt that, of all the problems confronting Congress, television-picture quality hardly registers.

Or it could be because viewers, as consumers, aren’t going to buy new televisions or converter kits for their analog sets while Congress dithers over when to begin this experiment for real. Either way, the solution is for Congress to decide on a hard date for conversion and get on with it.

That does not mean that all broadcasters should be held to the same deadlines. There is a real and important argument by small broadcasters that the cost is much steeper for them considering their ability to recoup the expense. Sen. Olympia Snowe, through the Digital Translator and Low Power Television Transition Act, would give low-power broadcasters an additional four years to convert their signals. That would provide the needed time while also moving most broadcasters out of the 700 MHz channels they now occupy for analog and allow public safety communications to take place there along with wireless services.

Congress, wisely, has tried to avoid the problem of switching over to digital broadcasting without the public being ready and having millions of television screens go fuzzy. The 1996 Telecommunications Act said broadcasters could keep their old spectrum as long as fewer than 85 percent of households in their market could receive digital signals. That could be a very long time unless Congress finds a better way to shove the situation along.

Congress is expected to resume discussion on the switch to digital this month. It has a lot of issues to cover, from whether to subsidize converter boxes for households with analog sets to how many billions of dollars to book against the deficit through the sale of spectrum space vacated by analog broadcasters. But what should be of interest to viewers is when the process will occur and what, ultimately, they have to do about it. Setting a deadline will force Congress to answer those questions.