Court Case Threatens Digital-TV Transition

[FTA Michael]

From Multichannel News:
"The digital-television transition could come to a sudden halt later this year if a public-advocacy group can persuade a federal court that the early 2009 mandated cutoff of analog TV was enacted unconstitutionally by Congress and President Bush about one year ago."

The nonprofit group Public Citizen argues that the bill that included the cutoff date was passed by both the House and Senate but with different language. The president signed the Senate version. The constitution requires an identical bill to pass both houses to become law.

Full story: http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6413076.html

[lwilli201]

Don't these people have anything else to do.

Even if they win, all congress has to do is correct the law. Congress is already commited to provide the freed up bandwidth to emergency services, etc.

[Smthkd]

...and how much time do they need! This has been announced since 1997 over 10yrs ago. The signal was orginally supposed to be turned off already but they extended it to 2009. Im sorry but 12 years is more than enough time to convert to digital!! :mad:

[Richard King]

The world has WAY too many lawyers.

[FTA Michael]

Even if they win, all congress has to do is correct the law. The point was made in the original article that the bill passed without a single Democrat voting for it. So it's possible that revisiting the bill could mean changes.

Also note that the main focus of Public Citizen's objection was a section on Medicare. Personally, I think it's bad that so many bits of legislation make their way through only by jumping on some unrelated platform.