Breaking News: House refuses to fast track DTV Delay Act

It's like the opening of Hitchhikers only with TV.

"I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout. "

 

Again sucks to be them. They will figure it out when they turn their TVs on and they don't work. They have had plenty of time to simply stumble on to the info. Its not like last Tuesday we just suddenly decided that Feb 17th we are shutting the analog signals off.

 

Not may happen, it will happen. Passed in the Senate, new vote to be taken in the house that only requires a simple majority to pass. The votes were not there the first time around for 2/3rd but will easily pass when only a majority is needed.

 

and if that was the case don't forget about the newspapers radio billboards etc that also had info on the transition

 

I spoke with a station engineer at WLNS in Lansing, a Young Broadcasting station, they can't move until WJRT in Flint moves as they are using the channel currently.

I hope that the move is not delayed, not the fault of the overwhelming majority that the minority didn't get their ducks in a row.

 

Was it by unanimous concent? Everywhere I've read about it the bill passed unanimously - I took that to mean by unanimous vote, but I could be wrong. As for your second point, no that's not true. They can't slow it down. In the House the majority really does rule. They set the agenda on what get's debated and voted on. I don't want to migrate to the political here, because I know that's not allowed on this forum, however, since we're discussing procedural issues with regard to legislation I think it's valid to talk about this. Look at what happened late summer - as Congress was going into summer recess the GOP kept pushing for their position on drilling off-shore. They wanted to lift the Congressional ban on it. The democrats absoultely refused to even hold a debate on the bill. As a result, no debate happened. The bill was never introduced. It was never discussed (at least not while Congress was in session), and it certainly never came up for a vote. The GOP couldn't even prevent the House from being called to recess, although they tried. The rules simply didn't allow for it - the majority wanted to adjourn, so they did.

About the best that the minority can do is to do just what they did here - prevent votes on bills that require suspension of normal rules of debate. The only exception to this happens IF the majority GIVES the minority specific authority to act. For example, the majority could give the minority, through the adoption of the rules, the ability to bring up points of order... or offer up bills outside of the approval of the majority. But (again, I'm NOT trying to get political on this - just explaining my understanding of the procedures) one of the first things that Speaker Pelosi did was to take away any such authorization, when she took power in January of 2007. Prior to that the minority DID have some authority granted to it by the majority. When the majority flipped, those authorizations were taken away.

BTW, thanks to all the replies on the clarification. That makes alot of sense - the fact that the clock is ticking on this (I lost sight of just how close the scheduled transition was) would prevent a normal bill from going through. The Wash Post article then is wrong - they didn't vote down the bill. THAT'S where my confusion came from.

 

I'll take that to mean you agree that it's hard to believe that all of these affected people are not in the know.

 

Has anyone seed the actual language in the senate bill as it pertains to which gets priority (existing analog broadcast or new permanent-RF-home digital broadcast) as of Feb 18? Hopefully, the new bill/law allows digital to trump any conflicting analog signal, and thereby force an analog shutdown in those cases.

 

After some more investigation I have foumd that the bill is definately dead.
This was a special bill that needed a 2/3 majority to pass. It the bill, is now completly dead. It will not happen. The changeover is now set in stone unless they try to do a new bill completely. The change over right now is Feb. 17, 2009.

 

It's the NAB'S and stations fault. They should've aired PSAS on the hour and half hour since 2006.

 

Thanks, Tom, for that not terribly happy news.