digital transition

Its coming up quick folks. The digital transition is beating down our door and we must be prepared for it. If you are already a cable subscriber, fear not; the cable company has you covered. If you are using regular bunny ears, you probably don't care anyway and are hosed. 

The truth of the matter is that a lot of people might be better off if their TV went away. I know, that since paring down my cable to basically network TV and discovery channel, I have been reading more, corresponding more, and getting outside more. I am not TV free, but, the constant stream of stupid from the waves of the idiot box are affecting me less. (Probably not reflected in my blog) 

In any event, this is one of the death throes of television as a medium. It is also a sign of socioeconomic stratification. People without broadband Internet access and a certain level of literacy are being left behind. If you cannot fire up the Internet or effectively derive meaning from a newspaper, your news and knowledge of the world dies if you do not update your TV antenna.

Corporations are running scared. The popular advertising outlet in many homes dies with the new digital signal. This means that they had to go out and convince the government to subsidize many boxes for people who could not afford them, because, unlike freedom, or education, or health care, television is a god given, inalienable right. The only hitch is that the government did not subsidize enough, and that people who could afford to upgrade their equipment snarfled up more than their fair share of the coupons. Imagine that. Greed. Imagine how pissed the major advertising buyers would be, that instead of giving people coupons for TV descramblers, we gave them subscriptions to Time, Newsweek, Mother Jones, Wired, or some other magazine that does not talk about the statutory relationships of Miley Cyrus. Holy jeez, we would be in for a shit show. 

 

I would like to believe that this could be an awakening, where the hypnotized masses throw off their shackles and join the experiment of democracy. I would like to believe that people will turn off their phased out TVs and pick up newspapers or read the news on the Internet, but I doubt that will happen. The folks who cannot afford cable or upgraded descrambler boxes are the same folks who have been marginalized for decades now, will continue to be marginalized in America.