Lee Wood’s HDTV Forum, USA Today and TG Daily say Feb. 17, 2009, is the drop dead date for the national conversion to digital TV — ending the more than 60-year era of analog broadcasts and potentially making millions of analog TV sets obsolete. The DTV Bill now heads to President’s Desk.

In a 212-206 floor vote this morning, the House adopted the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Title III, Subtitle D of which now includes the text of what had been known as the Digital Television Transition Act. In a late addition, and perhaps an olive branch to the Senate, the House language boosted the “hard date” from 1 January 2009 to 17 February 2009.

The House language is now in agreement with the Senate’s, in that it expects to raise at least $10 billion through the auction of the analog TV spectrum, though a statement from House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton (R - Texas) claims it could raise as much as $30 billion.

Wavering very little from the original House language, the Deficit Act would earmark the first $990 million raised from auction, for use as a DTV Conversion Fund. According to chairman Barton’s statement, the fund would enable the purchase of as many as 22.25 million set-top converter boxes, at $40 apiece, after as much as $100 million of the fund was set aside for administrative costs (down from $160 million). US households could apply for as many as two coupons apiece, good toward purchase of set-top boxes from manufacturers and retailers of their choice.

At that point, the House language makes further concessions to the Senate, including a $1 billion “Public Safety Interoperable Conversion Fund” (up from $500 million). The fate of a $30 million “NYC 9/11 Digital Transition Fund” and a $3 million “Low-Power Digital-to-Analog Conversion Fund” have not yet been reported. (Perhaps the latter fund may have been accurately renamed “Analog-to-Digital” in the meantime.) The remainder of funds raised at auction are to be turned over directly to the US Treasury.

Removed from the House version was language that enabled cable TV providers to downconvert high-definition signals for transmission over existing standard definition bandwidth. Newly appointed president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, David Rehr, praised the striking of this provision, stating the NAB is “especially encouraged that the legislation thwarts the cable industry’s desire to degrade delivery of HDTV pictures to consumers.”

Letting that comment slide, Kyle McSlarrow, Rehr’s counterpart at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, said in his prepared statement this afternoon, “The cable industry has long supported the important national public policy goal of completing the digital TV transition. After investing billions of dollars to bring the digital future to consumers, both cable operators and programmers stand ready to deliver.”

From here, the House and Senate will convene a conference committee to smooth over the language between H.R. 4241 and what had been known as S. 1932. Possibly obstructing smooth passage may be debates on topics which appear on the surface to have little or no relationship to digital TV broadcasting, including proposed cuts Medicaid entitlements and other benefits.

Both houses of Congress have passed digital television (DTV) bills as part of budget legislation.

Below is a comparison of the bills from the Benton Foundaton. Representatives from both chambers are now going to conference to iron out the differences in these bills.

The bills aim to end analog TV broadcasts in 2009, auction off returned analog TV spectrum in the same year and earmark those revenues for deficit reduction and other purposes.

For more detail about both bills, see Digital Television Transition Legislation House and Senate Bills Go to Conference (DOC).

Attachment: DTV Transition Legislation Comparison.doc (49.5 KB)

Posted by Sam Churchill on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 10:57 am.