Will you lose your signal?

Yes, I told you so. If you’ve followed my rants on the subject, you’ll remember my prediction at the transition to digital TV – just five weeks away as I write this – would be a disaster in the making. Well, that prediction is coming true.

After months of assurances from government agencies and industry flacks that plans for the DTV transition were going great guns, President Elect Barrack Obama has asked Congress to delay the switchover, now scheduled for Feb. 17.

The reason: millions of perfectly good analog TVs will go dark because they can’t receive the new transmissions and won’t have converter boxes attached. Those are boxes the American public has to pay for – and a $1.34 billion subsidy program to help viewers buy them has run out of cash with more than 7 million households still at risk.

Why does Congress have to act? Because it enacted a law in 2005 ordering broadcasters to turn off their analog transmitters on Feb. 17, 2009, and thereafter to deliver programs solely on new digital transmitters. Until now, local stations have been broadcasting both signals. Without a deadline enshrined in law, the cabal of legislators, regulators, broadcasters and TV makers who dreamed up this malodorous public policy knew that local stations would never get around to turning off their old transmitters – a move that will alienate millions of viewers who may never come back.

Don’t get too worked up about this yet. Chances are good that at least one TV in your house is safe. That’s because the transition only affects viewers who get their TV the old fashioned way – over the air, with an antenna (rabbit ears or external). About 80 percent of American homes are hooked up to cable, satellite or fiber TV services that will keep delivering analog signals after the transition and well into the foreseeable future. But that leaves around 19 million homes that rely strictly on over-the-air broadcasts, millions more with cable service that have additional sets in bedrooms, guest rooms, kitchens and other locations that still use antennas.

The Washington Post reported that almost 7 percent of American homes aren’t ready for the transition, and they include disproportionate numbers of the poor and elderly. The former may not be much of a political force, but old folks vote in droves. If their sets go dark, they’ll be forming lynch mobs and looking for legislators to blame.

The situation is particularly galling now that a program to provide households with two coupons worth $40 each to defray the cost of converter boxes is out of money. It has a waiting list with more than a million names on it, and the government is sending out new coupons only as existing coupons reach their 90-day expiration (and that’s another horror story). For many viewers who do have coupons, the subsidy won’t be enough. Most converters cost $50 to $80 – more than the value of the coupon. Worse yet, because digital signals are more subject to interference from terrain and buildings than analog broadcasts, millions of viewers will also need new antennas. These aren’t covered by any subsidy, and external antennas can run hundreds of dollars installed.

With so many other serious problems on the front burner – including a tanked economy and escalating violence in the Middle East — it’s no wonder the Obama transition team is willing to punt on this issue and delay the transition until it can straighten out the mess – if it can ever be straightened out.

“With coupons unavailable, support and education insufficient, and the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively-mandated analog cutoff date,” John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama transition team, wrote in a letter to Congress.

Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst with Consumers Union, noted that his organization has joined chorus urging a delay, calling the handling of the program “a giant miscalculation by our federal government.”

Although broadcasters are tiptoeing around the issue, they now have a 30-day grace period after Feb. 17 to continue broadcasting analog signals. But this so-called “analog nit elite” has one huge restriction: the only thing broadcasters can transmit is information telling viewers how to deal with the transition.