Developing Story: The government has now decided to postpone the transition to DTV conversion for four months. They ran out of money and coupons but have no fear the government will include more money for this program in the new economic stimulus package.
My question is: who were the planners of this program and what were they thinking?
I have been hearing about converting all TV reception to digital on February 17th for almost almost two years. The news media stressed that all would be OK because the government would give coupons to the people who don't have digital TVs or cable or satellite service. These coupons will help pay for a box that will convert the analog service to digital. All would be well.
I would like to share my story with you. I am one of the people that uses "rabbit ears" on 2 of my TVs because I can only afford satellite on my main TV in the living room. So, I applied for 2 coupons. The coupons came and I noticed that they would expire 90 days after they were mailed. OK, no problem - I thought. I put the coupons away and really didn't think much about it because I really don't think about digital TV 24-7.
Then the local TV stations ran a trial to see if everyone in the area was ready for the conversion. Well - my 2 "rabbit ear" TVs weren't ready. I went to get my coupons from the drawer where I had stashed them and to my amazement - they were expired. As I was staring at my expired coupons, I heard the news commentator responding to a question from a viewer about expired coupons. She said that the viewer could not use them and could not get new coupons because each household was entitled to only two. But, she went on to suggest that the viewer could possibly find a friend who didn't need the coupons and let the friend order them for the viewer.
This brings me to my point. The conversion was to be on February 17, 2009. So why did any of the coupons expire before that date? I believe the original planners of this coupon program had a "stupid fit". It is logical that the program would not have run out of coupons if they had a reasonable expiration date on them (like February 17th...duh!). I believe that many of the people who received the coupons were like me - either absentminded or are on fixed incomes which made them have to delay the purchase of the converter boxes until they could afford them. Now - if the planners had used the conversion date as the expiration date of the coupons (1) they would not have run out of coupons (2) they would not have run out of money because I feel sure they had to send out millions of coupons to people unnecessarily because of expired coupons.
Sorry but I had to get on my "bandwagon" a little bit and state my opinion about something I feel strongly about. However, I am happy to announce that I am ready for the conversion - no matter when it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment