TV's digital promised land

I have a dream today.

A dream that this nation will rise up to live out the true meaning of its creed. Which is that all men are equally entitled to free digital TV.

Probably not what Dr. King had in mind. Yet somehow it's TV that has become our latest civil-rights issue.

You've heard that the USA is going digital. On Feb. 17, over-the-air television signals will switch to digital only. Meaning if you use rabbit ears, as I still do, your old set may go blank unless you put in a converter.

Big deal, you may say. Technology marches on. Our fearless country will adapt.

Except: This is TV we're talking about! It is to America as blood is to the body.

And so it was last month that Seattle was named one of seven "at-risk" cities by the nation's oldest civil-rights organization, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. At-risk of having our TVs go dark. The group got a $1.65 million grant from the feds to help us navigate the changeover.

If I'm any test case, we need all the help we can get. But I'll get to that in a minute.

First I listened to a news conference by the civil-rights group. They described America's digital D-Day in Dickensian terms. A moment of opportunity, yes, but also when the haves could further leave behind the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the rural, the communities of color.

"We can't get people so frightened by this that they are panicked, that they freeze up and are unable to act," one civil-rights leader worried.

Good grief. If that happens, that's all the evidence we need that we're too hooked on TV.

I called the local guy who is using a portion of this grant to set up Seattle's DTV Assistance Center (so far it has a helpful Web site, seattledtv.com). He is Jonathan Lawson, director of the nonprofit Reclaim the Media.

You'll be relieved to hear he was far less apocalyptic.

"You do have to stretch your thinking a little to see this as a civil-rights issue," he said. "It's like when we moved from the vacuum tube to the transistor. It's progress, but you have to get new equipment to take advantage of it. So it's a change that impacts impoverished and disadvantaged groups more than the rest of us."

He said broadcast TV is more than sports and "Seinfeld" reruns. It's still the No. 1 emergency-info source. It's on public airwaves, so getting it is more a right than a luxury.

The government has spent $1.34 billion on coupons for Luddites like me to buy digital converter boxes. (As of Sunday, that money is gone. The bungling there is a whole 'nother story.)

I'm not saying it's a cinch to go digital. Because I tried — twice — and failed.

I plugged in a converter box. No signal. Lawson said I had the wrong antenna, so I bought a new one he recommended from RadioShack.

More channels popped up. Briefly, it seemed like TV paradise. Then the screen would break into blocks and dissolve — is there such a thing as digital snow? — then go dark.

It turns out in digi-world you either get channels perfectly, or not at all. It's called the "digital cliff." And I fell off it.

RadioShack guy said I may need a costlier antenna. Or: Subscribe to cable. Only I noticed the cable industry spent $13 million lobbying Congress for the digital-TV law in 2007. So that's exactly what they're expecting me to do.

For a media-rights guy, Lawson then said a surprising, refreshing thing.

"A lot of people are going to have pains like you're having. It's not the end of the world. Maybe for a time your relationship to your TV will be short-circuited. Maybe you'll read a few more books."

In other words: I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that we, as a people, will one day reach the digital promised land.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.