• The Washington Post, Thursday, June 11, 2009 9:30 AM

This was the plan: With digital broadcasts, the television set would become a shopping portal, an information node and an Internet-surfing console. Each night while you slept, a digital "data" broadcast would send a customized daily newspaper to your set-top box.

Well, DTV is here this week and none of those bright, blue-sky proposals has been realized. Broadcasters are using their digital powers simply to broadcast more TV shows, albeit in crisper digital format. The net impact of the conversion will be a few more channels and the chance to see more reruns.

Why the disappointment? Because "broadcasters never really tried to innovate," says Joel Brinkley, Stanford University professor. People who run "mature industries" like TV broadcasting don't understand businesses other than the one they're in and are paralyzed by tech change, he says. Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman, says broadcasters repeatedly sought delays in the transition to digital TV, and technology and the computer industry zipped by them. The Internet began to develop, and PCs, smartphones and mobile devices, not TV sets, became the household's technological hubs.

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