It is now official… O.K., almost official.  The U.S. House has voted to delay the DTV transition until June 12th.  The only thing holding up the delay is President Obama’s signature, but considering he and his transition team pushed for the delay, I can’t imagine that will be much of a problem.

Here’s a snippet from the NY Times coverage of today’s vote:

In a statement Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said that “the passage of this bipartisan legislation means that millions of Americans will have the time they need to prepare for the conversion.

On Wednesday, Ms. Brundage said the White House would “continue to work with Congress to improve the information and assistance available to American consumers in advance of June 12, especially those in the most vulnerable communities.” The stimulus package before Congress includes $650 million in financing for the transition.

A recent survey by Nielsen research found roughly 6.5 million households are unprepared for the DTV switch.  Today’s vote means they now have four months to try and get prepared. Let’s hope this delay does the trick.

The bill to delay the DTV transition does give stations the ability to make the switch early, if they want to, but KNME’s GM and CEO Polly Anderson says we will continue to broadcast an analog signal for the immediate future.  So that means whether you are watching our digital or analog signal, you are good to go for the time being.  As always, if you need more information about the DTV transition, just head to our DTV page.  

THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS TEAM

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under nmif. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.