We Interrupt This Broadcast…

ABC News reports tonight that the 9/11 Public Discourse Project Final Report on 9/11 Commission Recommendations has handed failing grades to the U.S. government on many points of its attempts to increase the nation’s security and stabilize other parts of the world. On page 3 of that document, however, I found this interesting:

Provide adequate radio spectrum for first responders – F (C if bill passes)
The pending Fiscal Year 2006 budget reconciliation bill would compel the return of the analog TV broadcast (700 Mhz) spectrum, and reserve some for public safety purposes. Both the House and Senate bills contain a 2009 handover date — too distant given the urgency of the threat. A 2007 handover date would make the American people safer sooner.

Could it be that the constant attempts to consolidate media ownership in America (link leads to an article I originally wrote in the Not News forums in May 2003) might be backfiring on the government itself? The thought that we’re waiting for the continually-delayed NTSC-to-HDTV cutoff date to take hold before doing anything about allocating emergency communications spectrum, or researching alternative communication frequencies or methods, is frankly ludicrous. That’s like saying we’re going to wait until ten million people are driving hybrid cars before we look at the problem of dependency on foreign fuel sources.

The problem lies with the FCC, and with the erosion of ownership regulations. The FCC continues to move the HD start date back because, and this isn’t a bad reason, the realization is sinking in that HDTV is not going to be something everyone can afford anytime soon. And of course, the major media companies are loathe to give up their chunks of the standard-definition broadcast spectrum, because they’re not going to be able to command the advertising sales figures they need to keep the doors open by broadcasting only to the narrow demographic of “people who have been able to afford an HDTV set.” And you better bet that the bigger these media conglomerates are, the more likely they are to have real lobbying power with Congress and the FCC that keep sliding the HDTV switchover date back…and back…and back. It’s not going to happen in 2007. I’ll be amazed if it happens in 2009.

We’ve backed ourselves into a commercial and legislative corner. And we’ve gambled part of our national security on a deadline that has been pushed back several times. The answer isn’t to force broadcasters to give up their frequencies, however – the answer was to find a more feasible, less pie-in-the-sky solution that wasn’t at the mercy of so many other uncontrollable forces.