MANDATED DTV EDUCATION IS DUMB IDEA

America harbors some of the dumbest people on the planet.

Despite free public education and ubiquitous mass media and communications, some large number of our fellow citizens are hopelessly clueless. You can see them in action everyday on Jerry Springer and Maury.

Ken Burns is going around saying that part of the inspiration for The War was a survey that found that an inordinate number of high school graduates believe Germany and the U.S. were allies in WW II. (Of course, if Burns were really interested in this bunch, he wouldn’t be partnering with PBS. He would be staging the Nuremburg trials as special episodes of Judge Judy.)

How dumb are the dumbest?

They are so dumb they believe the government is hiding the fact that we have been visited by extraterrestrials and made up the story about our visiting the moon.

They are so dumb that OJ and Phil Spector are still not behind bars.

They are so dumb that on Feb. 18, 2009, they are going to wake up, flip on the TV, find nothing but snow and wonder what the heck is going on.

No matter what broadcasters and cable operators and CE manufacturers and retailers and government do to educate the public, the analog cut-off is going to surprise a lot of people who simply aren’t paying a lot of attention about what’s going on around them.

I’m guessing the number of such homes could be as many as one million, about 5% of today’s 20 million over-the-air-only homes.

I say, so what?

So what if the people in those homes lose television for a few days.

As dumb as the dumb are, after their TV sets stop working, they will soon figure out what's going on and restore their service.

Most will go next door and their neighbor will say, “Boy, you are dumb. Didn’t you know you had to sign up for cable or get a new TV set or converter box? Call this number. The government will send you a coupon you can use to buy a converter box down at Wal-Mart.”

No damage done.

Unfortunately, the Democrats can’t accept this scenario.

They believe that everybody, no matter how dumb, can be saved, which is why they are now threatening to create a bureaucracy to manage the transition and to turn the industries' now voluntary DTV educational efforts into forced labor.

At the prompting of Democratic Representatives Ed Markey and John Dingell, the FCC last July proposed new rules that would, among other things, require broadcasters to air PSAs and regularly report all they are doing under threat of “civil penalties.”

Those proposed rules appear to be two-thirds of the way to becoming actual rules.

Democratic Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein have more or less said they don’t trust the industries to inform the public without mandates and FCC oversight.

“We’re on the road to a cold winter blizzard of outraged consumers,” a hyperbolic Copps said at an FCC DTV symposium last month.

“We cannot afford to have some licensees in a presidential election year decide that they can make more money selling political ads and figuring that someone else can pick up the DTV transition outreach slack,” he said.

Meanwhile, Herbert Kohl, the Democratic senator from Wisconsin, introduced a bill last week that would do by law much of what the FCC is thinking of doing by regulation.

We can only hope that all these Democrats are not really serious, that they are just threatening laws and regulations just to keep the industries’ volunteer efforts on track.

Which they are, as far as I can tell.

The NAB alone is putting together a massive awareness campaign, with out-of-pocket expenses that will surely run into the millions. We will get the full story next Monday (Oct. 15) when the trade association reveals all at a Washington press conference.

The NCTA has pledged $200 million in PSAs and the CEA is running Web sites and encouraging members to put converter boxes on store shelves that qualify for the government discount coupons.

And check out the site of the DTV Transition Coalition, which lists more that 150 associations, companies and interest groups that are committed to spreading the word. The information tickle down of all those group will be enormous.

Was I the only one encouraged by an APTS survey that found that only 51.3% of Americans are unaware of the DTV, down from 61.2% a year ago?

The industry campaigns have barely started and yet half the population is already in the know.

The Democrats say they are concerned about the elderly, speakers of foreign language and the disabled. I'm not sure why. My hunch is that the percentage of dumb people among these groups is no greater than it is among the general population.

Isn’t is condescending to assume that the people in these groups are so out of touch that it will require extraordinary means—government intervention—to reach them?

And let’s keep things in perspective here. This is not life or death. This is not a matter of national security. Osama doesn’t win if a bunch of people are deprived of TV for little while.

If the government really wants to do something to help the dumb, it should make sure it holds a couple million discount coupons in reserve to distribute the week immediately after the cut-off.

Now, that would be smart.

POSTSCRIPT: It was good to see the FCC punt on its white spaces rulemaking late last week.

Rather than rushing ahead with a vote on broadcast spectrum sharing by unlicensed wireless devices, the agency decided to test once again the key listen-before-talk technology that the sharing proponents claim will automatically prevent the devices from interfering with TV reception.

The FCC failed the technology in its first round of testing earlier this year. Having heard complaints about its methodology, the FCC says it wants to conduct this next round in an “open and transparent manner.”

No doubt the NAB and MSTV will accept that invitation to be fully involved in the testing.

The broadcasters believe that, with unlicensed devices cluttering up the broadcast band, DTV viewing will provide all the enjoyment of listening to an AM radio under power lines during a thunder storm at dusk in a house filled with florescent light fixtures and the vacuum cleaner running.

My column last week scolding public interest groups for blindly backing the white spaces proponents drew some good comments.

From Eric Small, CEO of Modulation Sciences Inc., a New Jersey company that makes audio gear from TV and radio:

I doubt that any listen-before-talk scheme can work, at least affordably.

It is maybe smarter to juggle the channels around and create more nationwide unlicensed bands like we have now.

The white spaces folks are really trying to be squatters. Consider that once there are a few tens of millions of devices out there, the spectrum can never be used for anything but DTV—what the listen- before-talk devices will be designed to detect.What about new technology? Eventually, only the unlicensed devices will be able to survive. 

From Jack Goodman, a communications attorney at Wilmer Hale who represents broadcasters:

One thing often overlooked is that MSTV and NAB have agreed that fixed unlicensed uses in the band are OK. Thus, they have already agreed that other users can come into the band, and are not just "hogging" unused spectrum. But fixed transmitters are easier to make work with and can be more easily tracked. 

Further, it's far from clear to me why this debate is just about one proposed use—unlicensed portable devices. That's what [former FCC Chairman Michael] Powell first proposed and there are certainly large economic interests supporting it, but there could be other and potentially better options.

For example, the old Pressler Grand Spectrum bill that went nowhere would have required the FCC to adopt an overlay license plan that would have granted licenses on unused channels for non-TV service. That proposal dealt with the same issue—the fact that a number of channels are unused in any particular area—but would have auctioned off the right to use those frequencies for lower powered services that would not have interfered with licensed TV stations.

It's not a perfect idea—the devil is in figuring out where TV service ends—but it would have been a regulated service and a lot more palatable than the current proposal.

Another question is what happens to low-power TV and translator stations.  They are secondary and subject to interference from licensed services. But the FCC prevents them from interfering with each other. These unlicensed device proposals do not appear to protect secondary services, so disruption may be even greater in the rural areas the proponents claim to want to serve.

One thing that the proponents seem to ignore is that their devices will be subject to and have to accept interference from anyone else in the band. Thus, someone may be using their unlicensed device to access the Internet when the wireless mikes at a nearby arena/auditorium light up and their Internet access goes away. That doesn't seem like a very consumer-friendly device.

Most, if not all, current unlicensed devices share spectrum with other unlicensed devices and, while that can be messy, they are all subject to the same rules. That won't be the case in this service.”

Harry A. Jessell is the editor of TVNEWSDAY. If you have a comment on this column, please send him an e-mail at hajessell@tvnewsday.com.