U.S. House Votes to Delay DTV Deadline

The U.S. House of Representatives voted today to delay the transition to digital television (DTV) until June 12, 2009, giving consumers more time to take action on maintaining their programming. Faced with up to 10 million angry TV viewers on the one hand, anxious broadcasters who don’t want to lose viewers, public safety groups and many other stakeholders, the Senate voted last week to push back the deadline, and today the House agreed. However, local TV stations can still request a waiver of the deadline and make the change early, and many are expected to do that because of expensive tower and transmitter leasing agreements. The DTV transition will free up UHF frequencies in the country’s biggest cities, allowing public safety agencies to fully claim 24 MHz of spectrum allocated in 1997.