In some recent dispatches, I've taken the position that the U.S. digital broadcast TV transition will be tantamount to the end of analog as we know it, not just for television, but symbolically for
the overall media marketplace. Broadcast TV still is the biggest of the big critical mass media -- even if most Americans already receive it via platforms like cable, satellite and telcos that are
digital to varying degrees. The symbolic impact of the shift to a digital broadcast spectrum, as well as the material dislocation it is likely to cause for the roughly 70 million TV sets now sitting
in living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens and who knows where else nationwide, could be profound for TV distributors, content owners, advertisers, agencies and consumers alike. So profound, that we
installed a "Digital Countdown" clock on the TV Board home page to tick off the seconds, minutes, hours and days before we tip over that precipice. But I'm also starting to wonder whether the angst
people are expressing within the industry isn't akin to all the fear, loathing and hand-wringing that preceded the so-called Y2K effect on Jan. 1, 2000, when all the computer systems around the world
- and everything operated by them - would supposedly come to a crashing halt that New Millennium Day when people woke up to find themselves thrown into chaos and anarchy. Well, we all know what
happened then.
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In hindsight, tech industry pundits have argued that had it not been for the anxiety leading up to Y2K, businesses would not have invested in the technology needed to avert such
disasters, and that this was simply a great example of society heeding some important warnings. Ironically, those technology investments may have contributed to another form of chaos: the bursting of
the tech bubble, the collapse of the Internet's "new" economy, and the most recent economic and advertising industry recessions. Well, all that seems like a distant memory now, doesn't it? So let me
ask you: How real you think the looming Y2K+9.13 (the digital transition occurs Feb. 17, 2009) effect will be?
One thing's clear: people are not spending gobs of money preparing for it. In fact,
the most responsible people - the federal regulators who mandated the transition - have committed a mere pittance toward informing the American public about exactly what digital broadcast conversion
actually means. According to a report by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Craig Moffett, that pittance is just two cents per American citizen -- the math on the $5 million budget the federal
government has set aside to educate the public on the transition. Compare that with the billions spent in preparation for Y2K -- and Y2K+9.13 may, in fact, prove to be cataclysmic when millions of
Americans awake Feb. 17, 2009 to find their analog sets unable to tune in to their favorite programming.
Editor's Note: In response to Monday's TV Board post, "The Powers That Has-Beens," CBS News issued the following statement :
For a document that purports to be concerned with the quality
of journalism and good reporting, it's ironic that the authors of this report [the white paper by the Writers Guild of America East] offer it as "an important and unique contribution to the debate
over news quality and its relation to the public interest." The writers left out a few relevant facts: This "white paper" is authored by the trade union that is currently in a long-standing,
well-publicized and emotional labor dispute with the only two companies it includes in the study; they are also, in fact, the only major broadcast news organizations that the WGA represents -- or that
have union-covered newswriters. Any attempt to position this document as legitimate or a clear picture of the quality of journalism being practiced in America's newsrooms is absurd.