>I guess the FCC (and millions of other folks) are very upset about February 
>17th :-)
>
> <URL: 
> http://www.betanews.com/article/The_DTV_launch_is_a_shambles_say_FCC_commissioners/1231621388
> >
>
> The call earlier this week by President-Elect Obama's transition team to 
> perhaps delay next month's DTV switch didn't just "come up" at Saturday's 
> "2009 Regulatory Outlook" panel at CES. It electrified it.
>
> Jonathan Adelstein and Robert McDowell, both commissioners at the Federal 
> Communications Commission, have seen trouble coming for a very long time. 
> Adelstein has served at the FCC since 2002, and McDowell began his first 
> term in 2006.
>
> Remember the coordinated governmental effort to fix and work around 
> potential Y2K problems? That tech initiative, like the DTV transition, 
> involved multiple agencies. And that's where the coordination comparison 
> ends. Where the Y2K effort had top-down supervision from the White House, 
> various guidelines to action, and synchronized effort, this has...well, at 
> least it's only television, not a hurricane aimed at a major US city.
>
> Nobody will actually drown thanks to a botched DTV rollout, but Adelstein 
> and McDowell's description gave listeners the sense that the program has 
> been in rough water since well before the transition team's remarks on 
> Thursday. No one -- at the FCC or any other agency -- is tasked 
> specifically with the changeover; there's no White House staffer cracking 
> the whip. No one was charged with developing guidelines or information for 
> the nation's 1,600-odd broadcasters, or for equipment manufacturers, or 
> support teams. And, says McDowell, without coordination "we haven't 
> maximized even the limited resources we had."
>
> The results have been disturbing. A plan to reach the nation's 210 
> television market areas (TMAs) by working with mayors fizzled out, 
> Adelstein remarked, when "somebody moved." State and local 
> consumer-edition efforts suffered because the feds haven't been able to 
> communicate what's happening and what to expect; in fact, both men said, 
> feds, broadcasters and contractors often didn't know about important 
> developments unless and until they were reported in the trade press. And 
> the performance of the two toll-free consumer hotlines (888-CALL-FCC and 
> 888-DTV-2009) would make the worst tech-support line operators blush.
>
> With no coordination and no guidance, FCC field reps and the local TMAs 
> have reached out to anyone who can maybe help, "reinventing the wheel" in 
> each market as Adelstein put it. In some locales, someone thought to speak 
> to ham radio operators about assisting in wiring up citizens who needed 
> help; in other places, the Salvation Army was contacted. McDowell said 
> that focused efforts were made to tap groups serving those who might not 
> understand the situation -- AARP and other senior groups to work with the 
> elderly, for instance, and PBS call centers in locales where public TV is 
> well-established.
>
> But delaying the launch will make some problems worse, especially for 
> companies that have invested in digital with the promise of this final 
> firm 2009 date. And some problems will exist whatever the roll date might 
> be, notes McDowell: "There's always a certain percentage of 
> procrastinators as well as those who through no fault of their own aren't 
> ready. We don't know where we are necessarily, and unfortunately the only 
> way to know [where these people are] is to have their screens go dark." 
> There'll be a thirty-day period after the rollout for reaching out to 
> those citizens, he says, but they'll be there regardless, and "for those 
> who act at the last minute you need to have a last minute."
>
> There are an amazing number of local issues turning up, too. For instance, 
> says McDowell, they've just realized that many houses in Las Vegas are 
> built mainly of stucco and chicken wire -- 
> accidental Faraday cages. Those houses will need a rooftop booster, and 
> there's no "coupon plan" for that. (The coupon plan has been in trouble 
> for awhile; at this point, the commissioners estimated that there could be 
> as many as 5 million applications by next month.)
>
> To coin a phrase, what the heck happened? One audience member pointedly 
> said that she'd attended hearings at which the NTIA and FCC had pledged to 
> work together on the transition -- "What happened?" The panel members 
> laughed, a little, and one noted that "[FCC Chairman Kevin Martin] speaks 
> at 1:30 -- that'd be a good question to ask him."
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> kch