ALA Panel Promotes Education Campaign for 2009 Digital TV Conversion
Raya Kuzyk -- Library Journal, 7/15/2008
• Potential difficulties of DTV conversion discussed
• Libraries encouraged to host educational sessions
• More to DTV multicasting than meets the eye
The change from analog to digital television (DTV) programming on February 17, 2009 may cause significant disruption for U.S. households whose sets are not connected to cable, satellite, or other pay services. So said Carrie Lowe, director, Program on Networks, American Library Association (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy, at an ALA Video Round Table meeting in Anaheim, CA, noting that “this is a real place for libraries to step up and play a role.”
Following a discussion of copyright issues that included the preservation and reformatting of VHS collections, Lowe told the approximately 150 librarian attendees that the DTV transition would mean improved picture quality and sound and that it would enable broadcasters to multicast, or deliver three or more simultaneous programs. She also spoke of ALA's partnership with RadioShack to host educational sessions at public libraries addressing the reason for the change, its implications, and how to acquire government coupons to help reduce the cost of the digital converters that many will require.
Two points of controversy
Lowe was there chiefly to discuss ALA's public-awareness campaign, and in the 20 minutes she was allotted, she can hardly have been expected to speak to much more than that. But one source of controversy surrounding the transition is whether the government's $40 coupons (two per household) sufficiently bump down the cost of the $50–70 converter boxes (Lowe reported that, as of June, just 48 percent of the government coupons remained). Residents of Wilmington, NC, with converter boxes will be the first to experience the transition: the Communication Commission (FCC) has designated an early test rollout to take effect on September 8.
Another point of controversy was recently elucidated by Bruce Dixon, managing editor of The Black Agenda Report, a self-described “journal of African American political thought and action," who argued in a June 11 article that multicasting does not, as it rightly should, serve public interest (because the airwaves are the legal property of the public, he writes, the FCC grants broadcasters licenses only on the condition that they serve public interest—but neither Congress nor the FCC has attached any public service or public interest requirement to the thousands of new DTV channels this transition will gift the nation’s more than 1700 broadcast TV license holders). Dixon closed by urging the public to demand from Congress an explanation as to “why thousands of newly available digital TV channels should not go to thousands of new local broadcasters,” be they community organizations, schools, unions, or minorities.
Asked to comment, Lynne Bradley, director of ALA's Office of Government Relations, agreed with Dixon's assessment, saying that "we are going to have to succeed in making the argument that the public interest must be addressed when the huge telecommunications debates come before us" in the new 111th Congress. "We know from the battles at the time of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that the E-rate discount program for public libraries and K–12 public and private schools was essentially the only 'public interest' provision in that legislation," she told LJ. "And we're still battling to preserve the program."
Check LJ's 2008 ALA Annual Conference page for more ALA-related coverage
