Republican pork: 3 billion is subsidies for digital television

[Zuni]

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=... \ACQDJON200510191334DOWJONESDJONLINE001005.htm&

Senate Digital TV Bill To Include $3 Billion Converter Subsidy



By Brian Blackstone, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- A Senate bill, scheduled for committee vote Thursday setting an April 2009 digital television transition date, will include a $3 billion subsidy program for digital converter boxes, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Wednesday.

The subsidy will cover "everyone who has a TV who needs a box," Stevens said at a luncheon speech sponsored by the Free Enterprise Fund.

The $3 billion will come out of the roughly $10 billion in proceeds expected from sale of the block of 700 megahertz spectrum currently occupied by broadcasters that will be freed up with the switch to digital TV signals.

(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires

10-19-051334ET

The subsidy program outlined by Stevens assumes that set-top converter boxes - which allow analog TV sets to receive digital signals - will cost about $50 each. The subsidy requires a $10 co-payment per box.

The Senate digital TV bill also includes funds for emergency 911 service and interoperability grants. Some of the freed-up spectrum would be set aside for use by emergency first responders, whose communications difficulties were highlighted by Hurricane Katrina.

The bill would direct $4.8 billion in spectrum auction proceeds for the

[RobertSeattle]

1. "Fiscal Conservative" is becoming an utter joke

[Dora]

2. Must.... keep... the people....

watching... television.

WAKE UP! TURN THEM OFF! THROW THEM OUT!

[Zenlitened]

3. "... sponsored by the Free Enterprise Fund."

Irony is dead.

[Zuni]

4. I noticed that too

[tritsofme]

5. Moving to digital will have huge advantages to everyone

when all that broadband is freed up when the broadcasters move away.

And as the article said, the government will come ahead $10 billion with the sale.

Its only right if the government is mandating the move that subsidies for converter boxes be given to everyone who needs one, since the people still in need of it would be disproportionately poor and elderly.

I don't see this a bad idea at all.

[NoAmericanTaliban]

6. and they call us Socialist...

another prime example of corporate socialism - aka - corporate welfare. Anytime I get labeled a Socialist by a right winger I point out who the real socialist are. If they do not buy that I call them fascists