As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take over the United States this week, his transition team is reportedly interested in delaying the switch from analog to digital TV in a few months.
The current government-mandated transition is scheduled to take place on Feb. 17, but lawmakers are now thinking about delaying the transition as millions of American TV viewers haven't upgraded their TVs to support digital signals. Although a larger number of consumers have TVs using cable and satellite connections, there are still many viewers who rely on analog TVs to receive broadcast channels.
The U.S. government's program that subsidizes converter boxes for analog TVs ran out of money earlier in the month, which has caused alarm among politicians.
If you have cable or satellite TV, you'll be unaffected when the transition takes place.
The Obama administration supports a delay, but Republicans in the U.S. Senate objected Sen. John Rockefeller IV (D, WV)'s plan to have the date set to June 12. Senator Rockefeller will likely resubmit the bill sometime during the week. Moving forward, expect both sides to continue to argue about what should be done, as Obama officially becomes President in two days.
I fully expect the Senate will delay the analog TV shutdown, pushing it back from next month until June. Many politicians and curious analysts also expect a delay to become official sometime in the near future, so the government has additional time to issue vouchers to TV viewers.
