DTV: Switching is more than a cheap or poor person's thing

Forbes, with its usual flair for citing the esoteric yet obvious (that is a compliment), with a Dec. 2008 piece offers insight into the digital TV switch that is an excellent tidy stack of chunks of good information. (Why can't TIME, Newsweek, TV Guide, EW, Fortune, People -- are you getting the drift? -- CNET, and so many other media outlets do half as good at spelling it out, FULLY, as Forbes does here? Maybe they did -- I didn't see it, I confess, I saw this sparkling example of good informative journalism, and I like it.) You ought to check it out, even if you have the vaguest of interest in getting a converter box, or dropping cable or satellite as an expense-reducing maneuver.

Surviving The Switch To Digital TV - Forbes.com

What the digital switchover is actually doing is changing the language that TV broadcasters use to communicate with your television. Since 1941, televisions in the U.S. have utilized a set of broadcast standards laid out by the National Television System Committee. Big broadcast towers sent out information over the air using these NTSC standards and were picked up by the television antenna in your living room. Inside your TV, an NTSC tuner interpreted the information and properly displayed it on screen.

The author, Michael Patrick Brady, brings up the often overlooked, at least unspoken, logic, behind any family dumping cable and satellite. As an admitted TV addict trying to recover from it, the thoughts are something I can appreciate.

With the emergence of free, digital, over-the-air television that includes HD transmissions, it will be interesting to see if Americans, the majority of whom now pay for their television service via cable or satellite, might see the benefit of switching back to the old rabbit ears. While the selection of over-the-air broadcasts will never be as comprehensive as pay services, that same glut of content is often cited as an annoyance--lots of channels that subscribers will never watch.

Most people would save from $600 to $1400 per year by dropping the 80 to 400-plus channels, most of which they have never watched for more than ten minutes, and could put that money to good use. Putting that money into some sort of savings, say, for the kid's or kids' college fund, would offer you far mroe than an addiction to cable or satellite TV is doing for your family. I love TV, but I love eating, too -- I know when to stop both, sorta. Especially right now, with the economy tanked, you could borrow DVDs from the library, or rent them, or frequent freebie and/or paid online movie and TV sites. Or, if you are a collector, buy the movies and documentaries and TV shows they really like and, God forbid, see films in theaters (for $12.00 a ticket -- is it? -- and sacrificing their child's college education for popcorn, candy and soda).

Besides, when 24-hour news channels, unless you catch a worthy special report, are often as useless as trying to study a textbook by staring at its cover, it seems to me there better things one could do with their time. Heck, that money you save could go toward charities, if you're so responsibly inclined.

Charities could use your money these days, as there's more and more people, addicted to the wealth of the nation, to TV, and to business as usual, who are in need of a boost these days. Charities need all the help they can get today. Hmmm ...

Dump cable. Donate to charities.

Just think about it. It could be akin to a religious experience, freeing yourself from the bonds of 400 channels, and realizing that reading a bound group of pages, and online information and programming, too, can addict you.


- Jon O.

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News is: a terrible business to be in, generally

Journalists are becoming a sort of endangered species in the job market. With them, so are radio announcers, or radio personalities. Each area has their stars, sure, and there are still newspapers, sites and radio stations, but the job there are not growing. The world of media, more than ever since TV first appeared, has been changing thanks to the Internet and a growing set of airborne and piped-in media providers.

Job growth is stiff, and since long ago the income has sucked. Like the prevalence of writers and actors in California or New York City, "everyone" wants to be a journalist, in a sense, though I suppose the idealistic view of journalists is suffering these days, but it still skews the job market, in my view. I can personally attest to the slender income many times over, having done a variety of work in the business, as a small publisher, an editor, a design and advertising editor and manager, a small weekly section assistant editor, and more. Granted, there are some who will speak of it otherwise, but the news business is becoming a bit of a terrible place to be hoping for a paycheck. Forbes argued this, as I've quoted below.

The Worst Jobs For The 21st Century - Forbes.com

Another endangered species: journalists. Despite the proliferation of media outlets, newspapers, where the bulk of U.S. reporters work, will cut costs and jobs as the Internet replaces print. While current events will always need to be covered (we hope), the number of reporting positions is expected to grow by just 5% in the coming decade, the Labor Department says. Most jobs will be in small (read: low-paying) markets.

Radio announcers will have a tough time, too. Station consolidation, advances in technology and a barren landscape for new radio stations will contribute to a 5% reduction in employment for announcers by the middle of the next decade. Even satellite radio doesn't seem immune from the changes.

As anyone who works in the news business can attest, sagging ad revenue, rising newsprint costs and Internet competition are quickly changing this industry. Large metropolitan dailies have cut jobs and the size of their papers. Of course there will always be a demand for news, but the government projects news jobs will grow at a meager 5% by 2014. Best places to look for work: small-town and suburban newspapers, TV and radio.

Working conditions: irregular hours, frequent deadline pressure, fierce competition.

Median annual salary: about $32,000 for reporters, $37,000 for broadcast news analysts.

In Pictures: The Worst Jobs For The 21st Century

- jR

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