U.S. Senate Committee on Aging Addresses DTV Switch Affecting Seniors
In February, 2009, all television transmission in the United States will switch over to digital transmission (DTV). Apparently, there is a belief that the FCC is not adequately prepared to educate seniors about the implications of the changeover.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging is holding hearings and has referred to a study by the Association of Public Television Stations finding as Follows:
"Americans aged 65 and older are consistently more likely to receive television signals via an over-the-air antenna than younger Americans and are therefore less prepared to transition from analog to digital-only television."
Senior citizens, the poor and minority populations are among those expected to be most affected by the February 2009 switch to DTV, when over-the-air viewers will need a converter box or a DTV to get their TV picture according to the committee' Chairman, Herb Kohl (D-Wis.).
In truth, I can't dispute the finding, but I'm a little resentful at any suggestion that seniors won't be able to find their way through this technological maze. It doesn't look all that difficult. As a group, seniors are not as inept as the committee seems to think.
Look, active older people, 65 and up, are survivors. They didn't get there by being coddled. There will be plenty of information available as the switch over date approaches. In my opinion seniors are just as able to process and act upon such information as the remainder of the population. They're not a helpless lot as stereotypes would have it. Most have had converter boxes, rabbit ears and less than satisfactory TV reception earlier in their lives. There's no reason to think DTV will pose any sort of unusual challenge to seniors.
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As a baby boomer, and remembering the first infant steps of the box in the living room, I wonder why any importance at all is attached to watching television. In some ways it would be better for society if they were unable to access television.
In one night’s viewing there are many programmes softening us up, so that we will accept the life that we see on this instrument of hypnosis. The soaps give us violence and relationship disharmony, the news is nothing but misery and violence. Drama, is just that, the victim, helper, persecutor story worked over and over again, and comedy tells us that it is really funny to deride other people and their ways of living.
There is of course the superb wild life and nature programmes…oh and the weather forecast!