FCC may delay transition from analog to digital TV Postponement to let consumers have 5 extra years to buy October 14, 2004 BY CHARLES HOMANS FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF WASHINGTON -- Thinking you need to replace that old-fashioned analog television with a digital model before it\'s too late? You may have another five years. That\'s because lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission don\'t think consumers will be ready to switch by the end of 2006, the current legal deadline, said Rick Chessen, head of the commission\'s digital task force. So government officials are eyeing a loophole that gets them around the 2006 due date: The law also says the transition to digital sets should come once 85 percent of American households own televisions that get digital signals. Depending on who\'s counting, the current figure might only be as high as 10 percent. In the meantime, the FCC has adopted an unofficial target date of Jan. 1, 2009, for the transition. "Having a deadline of 2009 will add millions more digital sets to the marketplace before analog signals are turned off," FCC Chairman Michael Powell told the Senate Commerce Committee in September. Members of the broadcasting industry like the idea. "The issue for us is potentially disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans from local TV, and we would suggest that we need to make this transition in a way that is consumer friendly," said Dennis Wharton, the spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, a Washington-based trade group for TV stations. But media critics say an extension would allow broadcasters to hog large segments of the publicly owned broadcast spectrum that\'s worth billions to the wireless phone industry and other commercial communications interests. "The broadcasters are spectrum-squatters," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based public interest group. "Spectrum is the new gold -- it\'s the oil wells of cyberspace." . . .
