Couch potato subsidies: TV goes digital.

• Author: Sanchez, Julian
• Position: Brief Article

THE FIRST DUTY of government is to secure our fundamental rights. No doubt that is why the Senate agreed in November to spend up to $3 billion retrofitting old television sets to guarantee that every man, woman, and child in these United States would be able to enjoy high-quality digital broadcasts of Desperate Housewives.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) had initially proposed an amendment limiting the subsidy to a paltry $1 billion, but a spokesman later told the Associated Press that the senator had decided to withdraw it, on the grounds that money saved would just be spent on other projects. The cash will buy converter boxes for sets that would otherwise stop receiving signals in early 2009, when night falls on the age of analog broadcast TV.

That year is the deadline for broadcasters to complete the transition to digital television--a task that requires them to give at least $I o billion worth of analog frequencies to the government. Don't worry that they've lost out on the...