After the Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation to postpone the switch to digital TV for four months, the U.S. House of Representatives shot down the bill yesterday.
House Republicans defeated a bill that would have pushed until June 12 the deadline by which TV stations must surrender their analog spectrum allotment and begin broadcasting exclusively in digital format. That leaves the original Feb. 17 deadline for that transition intact — at least for now.
Introduced to the House floor under special expedited conditions that required a two-thirds vote, the bill fell just 32 votes short. It can be reintroduced on the regular congressional calendar next week, when it will require only a simple majority for passage.
Even if Wednesday’s defeat for the Democrats only delays the inevitable passage of the bill, however, the wrangling over when TV broadcast signals are switched over seems to fly in the face of the feel-good, bipartisan agenda widely touted in Washington only a week ago.
“The (delay) is a solution looking for a problem that exists mostly in the mind of the Obama administration,” said Joe Barton (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Commerce Committee, explaining to the Associated Press that a delay would cost TV stations a lot of money and further confuse the public.
Thank god… It’s only been delayed 8 years.
So much for America taking the lead in something. The rest of the world passed us by long ago.
Now if we could only get that damn metric system in place, we could play with the rest of the world.