The Obama team is being prudent in considering that the poor and disadvantaged should not be disenfranchised from lifeline TV service. But it will be impossible to accommodate every last holdout that has been ignoring the message for over a year. Delaying the turnoff will cause the industries and the public to doubt the veracity of Congress – and these days, we need more trust in government, not less. Trust is what we want of our elected officials, and it is perhaps the greatest potential asset that the new administration can bring to Washington.
Broadcasters initially opposed the request, then backed up somewhat, with NAB saying that they would support a solution that ensures coupon availability. ABC issued a one-sentence comment supporting a delay. NBC called the Obama statement "prudent and well-considered." Fox and CBS said they were glad of the discussion but did not expressly call for a delay.
Meredith Attwell Baker, head of the NTIA, said that the organization had advised Congress “as early as November 6 that coupon demand may hit the $1.34 billion obligation limit by mid-January.” The government and broadcasters have “invested so much in preparing for this date,” she said, and a delay “would create uncertainty, frustration and confusion among consumers.”
Lawmakers inside the Beltway may not fully appreciate the complexity of timing product production and distribution to meet demand; marketers spend a lifetime trying (or failing) to accurately predict a product’s life cycle. The coupon program has the added complication of a product exit strategy that is timed to the shutoff date and the subsequent expiration of all coupons. In all likelihood, manufacturers have by now shut down production, and will probably hold back some units for warranty exchange; to lengthen the program would only cause more confusion and aggravation by extending consumer awareness past the planned period of expected demand.
The early shutoff test in Wilmington showed that some viewers failed to request coupons not out of a lack of awareness, but because they felt the program was not “real,” and that analog services would not actually be turned off. Counterintuitively, with a fixed number of coupons, the way to minimize the possibility that viewers will be caught with no subsidy is to keep the transition date, not to move it back. Because there will always be a number of viewers that are caught unawares, their number will be minimized if the transition occurs when there are still coupons available – sooner, not later. Delaying the transition date may make for fewer uninformed viewers, but these will be faced with the increasing likelihood of fewer (or no) coupons.
Congress should therefore quickly do the following: (1) pass an emergency waiver of the ADA rule, to allow immediate distribution of new coupons; (2) encourage broadcasters to transmit a 24-hr “crawl” message on all analog broadcasts immediately, announcing that TV service is about to end on that and all high-powered analog channels; and (3) ask the FCC to allow broadcasters, where possible, to continue to transmit a help message on the old analog channel for at least 30 days after the transition.
When my children are reluctant to end their TV viewing at night, I pick up the remote and turn it off. The country needs to go cold turkey, too. The time comes in every project to silence the planners and go to market, already. Pull the plug, on February 17th. We have bigger problems to worry about in the coming year.