As of June 12, 2009, all full-power television stations nationwide began transmitting exclusively in digital format.  This ultimately changed how the United States of America watched television.  Why did this happen?  Was it necessary?  Was it right?

    Technology in the past century and a half has literally been on the ultimate fast track, both in America and around the world.  At the end of the civil war, the majority of rifles were loaded from the muzzle in a fashion almost identical to that of centuries past.  The railroads were just making process; the majority of transportation was still accomplished by the power of horses or oxen.  Telegraphs had yet to span the country, as the companies who would fund them, such as “Western Union”, were just in their stages of infancy.

    A little over fifty years later, the first Fords were being mass-produced, and the Wright Brothers had flown the first working airplane.  Over the next decade, the first transcontinental telephone line was established.  During the First World War, then known as the “Great War”, a number of knew technologies were introduced to the battlefield, all of which continue to set the standard for modern day militaries.

    In 1928, the first TV stations went on air.  At that time, both the sound and image from these rudimentary devices was poor, but for a world who had only been exposed to motion pictures, which were still a relatively new at the time, the concept of having such a form of entertainment in one’s front room was amazing.  Less than twenty years later, the first color television station began transmitting.

    Now, technology is becoming so advanced that we have little idea on what to do with it all.  Jay Leno once remarked on the “Tonight Show” about how one had to purchase an Ipod every two weeks in order to keep up with the latest trend.  This also seems to be true with automobiles, cellular phones, gaming consoles, and just about anything else that has electricity powering it.

    Now, large electronics store have men and women whose specific jobs are to keep up with the latest information on a specific kind of electronic.  There are so many styles of televisions that one can easily become confused in what to purchase.  CRT, LCD, Plasma; big, small, wide, tall.  There are so many varieties of TVs that it would seem there should be no excuse for one not to have one in his house.

    However, now that the entire US has gone to digital, a number of individuals have been alienated.  Most people like to keep their TVs until they break down.  There was a day and time when these said televisions would last a decade or more; I still have one lying around that I remember having watched the Disney movie “Aladdin” on as a young child.  Unfortunately, it seems that any product produced in this day and time is constructed with the philosophy of plain obsolescence.  The television my parents bought a few years back, a 32″ Toshiba, is already starting to have problems.  Thankfully, that television had digital capabilities built into it.  Many people I know were not so blessed.  They are now required to purchase a converter box that generally cost around $70, depending on where you go.

    Now granted, the government was providing coupons for just about anyone that reduced this price to next to nothing, but this has not helped everyone.  Due to some twist of fate, there were, and still are, quite a number of people effected by this shift.  These individuals most likely don’t have the money to purchase these converter boxes, nor were they aware of any coupon programs until after they had passed.  This has lead to them completely missing out on a number of their favorite hits over the summer.

    But why is the government even involved in this?  Why should it matter to our senators and representatives what kind of television we’re watching?  I am a firm believer in the free market, and I find the amount of political bureaucracy that a cable or satellite company has to go through ridiculous.  Should our government be telling us what kind of TV we should be watching anymore than the kind of health care plan we should have, or the kind of car we should be driving, or the gasoline that we put in our cars?  This is just another, decades-long example of the government shoving its nose where it doesn’t belong.

    Or is it?  Why exactly do we need to go digital? The TV signals we had before worked just fine, in my opinion.  In fact, I find it a little annoying that rather than going a little fuzzy, the picture now lags, skips frames, or completely blacks out when the signal is weak.  During iffy weather, watching digital television is worse than trying to watch streaming video on dial-up.

    The primary reason we needed to go digital is because we need more space on the airwaves.  What, you thought that the TV stations really wanted to give you better TV that bad?  You were wrong.  There is another industry out there that takes up quite amount of the signal space out there.  It is an industry that has been booming for about the past decade or so.  This would be the cell phone industry.

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Since the early-90s, advances in cell phone technology has been skyrocketing, especially since the 2G networks were developed.  The concept behind these networks were the driving force behind a number of digital technologies, such as the Wi-Fi network that you may very well be connected to with your laptop or PDA.

    However, since the advent of such technologies, the number of free public airwaves has shrunk significantly.  The conversion to digital TV, in theory, would shore up the amount of frequencies used by the television stations, providing more room for other transmitting media.  Many of the lost frequencies are quickly being used up by cell phone companies.

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    Now, having taken this into consideration, is the government getting involved in the free market again, or is the free market getting involved in the government?  One could say either, depending on how the evidence is presented.  However, this looks like a fine example of one of the increasingly rarer moments when the big kids of an industry start using the government to further their own means.  The digital converterter boxes cost anywhere from $50 to $100.  Considering the hundreds of millions of television owners in the nation, this creates a market where the sellers can stand to make a massive profit.  While it is certainly hard to believe that companies would actually be able to do this in the economy of this time and day, we may have on our hands a fine example of the same tricks that were used by early businessmen like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan.  And realistically, there is nothing we can do about it.  What are we going to do, get all of America to stop using their cell phones, satellite radios, and televisions for an entire day?  Because it’s not going to happen.

    This is just an example of what this world is coming to.  Even something so old, so traditional, so memorable as the television is becoming corrupted.  There was a time and a day when every evening, the entire family would gather together in the evening to watch their favorite programs like the “Andy Griffith Show”, and “I Love Lucy”; now, one must make sure her young child isn’t watching TV past 8:00 pm, or they can easily end up watching shows only suitable for those of a mature age, and sometimes not even that.  There was a time and day when a woman moving seductively in a shower was enough to warrant an “R” rating; now, one can hardly find a commercial on public programming that isn’t in some way hinting at sexuality.  There was a time and a day when all one had to do in order to watch their favorite Saturday morning cartoons was go outside and adjust the antennae; now, in order to get the latest channels, or the “best” material, he has to purchase a cable or satellite plan.

    We must always be vigilant.  When companies start taking advantage of the government, and when the government starts taking advantage of companies, good things rarely ever result.  One of these days, my grand kids could be watching government-funded stations that destroy their ability to think and act for themselves; or they may be watching material so obscene that even someone from my generation, the liberal, rising generation, would cringe in disgust.  Only time will tell.