Posted on 01/06/2009 7:18:33 AM PST by MikeNJ
The government's billion-dollar program to help people prepare for the transition to digital television has run out of money, potentially leaving millions of viewers without coupons to buy converter boxes they need to keep their analog TV sets working after the switch.
As of this past Sunday, consumers who request a $40 coupon to help offset the cost of a converter box are being placed on a waiting list. They may not receive the coupons before Feb. 17, when full-power television stations will shut off traditional analog broadcasts and transmit only digital signals.
Members of Congress are now scrambling to find ways to allocate more money to the program....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I got my converter box a while back. DTV is actually kind of neat.
WOW — This is scarier than Y2K !
"Women and minorities most affected!"
“Congress allocated $1.34 billion to provide coupons to help offset the price.”
JM&J ... we could have bought everyone in America a new television for what we wasted on converter coupons.
So now, without government subsidy, the price of converter boxes will plummet to the actual value of the content that they will enable.
A government program that cannot deliver what it promised within the estimated budget, what are the odds of that?
It’s in the constitution you know!
$40 coupon? What does a converter cost?
Where is there in the Constitution a right to watch TV at MY expense? Why should MY tax dollars go towards someone else’s TV converter box? $40 won’t kill anyone. Giving up booze or smokes or dope for a week should take care of the cost. And if you can’t afford the forty buck$ what are you doing watching TV in the first place? Go out and earn the $40. Get it from family members. Get off yer ass! Why should I subsidize YOUR bad habits?? I object!!! SSZ
I believe that most of the people getting the boxes don’t even need them. A converter box is not required if you already pay for cable tv, which is what most people already do. I realize that there are a large amount of people who don’t, but I don’t believe that it would be enough to exhaust that program. How soon after the program runs out of money do those boxes start ending up on Craigslist and ebay?
Yep. Another government boondoggle. The government is now, in effect, in the business of buying TVs for its citizens. Our founding fathers surely are spinning in their graves.
The government could have saved all this money, kept up the PSA’s through February and people would have bought the boxes on their own, with their OWN money.
This whole program is wasteful and idiotic.
I get despondent thinking of all the weddings and funerals I have to sit through without the game on my Sony Watchman color TV.
LOL! That's a bull's eye!
(was searching for a photo of Peg Bundy watching TV to put here, but c'est la vie)
“The government is now, in effect, in the business of buying TVs for its citizens.”
Well, to be fair, if we can’t get our salvation from our new lord and messiah, then all the effort collaborating with the media will be wasted.
It’s like asking the masses to PAY for government propaganda - and if there is one thing we Americans have a right to, it is free government propaganda. I demand free propaganda, don’t you?
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