To say there's a lot riding on next year's DTV transition would be a gross understatement. Make the switch to all-digital TV broadcasting over the course of one night? Piece of cake!
All you have to worry about are the 14 million households who still get their TV programming OTA, some percentage of which are already hitting the government up for their gratis $40 coupons and picking up their digital converter boxes...if they can find them.
Then you have carriers, folks like AT&T and Verizon, who are waiting to use that sweet, sweet 700-MHz spectrum that will be left in the wake of the DTV transition. Oh yeah, and there are also companies like Google, HP, Microsoft and Dell who are hoping to create mobile devices and services that will be able to tap into the vacated "white space" spectrum once this transition takes place.
Let's not forget the retailers, all of which are projecting consumer equipment needs based on (for now) one fixed deadline set by the FCC. And finally, we have the broadcasters themselves, who are hoping to successfully launch themselves into the digital future and not violate any FCC rules along the way.
Needless to say, not everyone is convinced this will happen. Even one of the FCC's own commissioners, Michael Copps, has remained dubious of this transition since Congress announced its plans back in late 2005.
"Pulling the switch on stations all across the land...in February 2009 is going to be a real throw of the dice," Copps recently said in a January statement, adding that, "it is unfathomable to me that we are planning to turn off every full-power analog signal...on a single day without running at least one test market first."
So what'll it be? Can the U.S. pull it off in one night? Or will analog TV viewers wake up to snowy TV screens on February 17, 2009, and descend on Washington with pitchforks and torches? Let us know, Reddit style. We've mapped out three simple scenarios to get you started.
While you can submit as many predictions as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.
