Reply #114: auctioning them off is a damn sight better than simply giving them away

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which is what we've done in the past. The holders of licenses to the spectrum are still regulated in how they use the spectrum and still at risk of having their licenses revoked -- at least as much as license holders ever have faced that risk.

And you keep saying television is being taken away from millions -- well, that's almost certainly a gross exageration -- a substantial amount of taxpayer money has been allocated to subsidize the cost of obtaining a box that will allow viewers who rely on over the air reception to continue to receive not only the signals that they now receive, buy additional streams of programming. WIll there be some dislocations? Yes. But not nearly what you think, and less so if the transition is delayed a few months to get the coupon program back to where it should've been.

And are you suggesting that when the DTV deadline was set back in 2005 that everyone knew that there was going to be a financial meltdown occuring at the time the transition was taking place? Cause if you are, I wish you had mentioned it at the time so I could've made some different investment decisions.