Political Quotes

“we are now less than 2 weeks from the February 17 digital television transition date, and millions of American households remain totally unprepared. On January 22, the Nielsen Company, which is a widely respected service that reports on television viewing in the United States, reported that fully 6.5 million households are totally unprepared for the transition. These are homes that rely upon antennas or rabbit ears in order to get their television service. They do not have cable or satellite subscriptions. And given the fact that they are totally unprepared today, if the transition goes forward as scheduled on February 17, these 6.5 million households will lose all of their television service, and that number represents about 5.7 percent of the total American television viewing public. If almost 6 percent of the nation's households lose all of their television service, I think that most people would declare that the digital television transition has been a failure. At the present time, there are 3.7 million requests for converter box coupons pending at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and since early January, the program that funds those coupons has been out of money. Those requests therefore, cannot be honored. And the waiting line for coupons is growing rapidly. On Friday of last week, the number of requests was 3.3 million, and over the weekend, during the day on Monday, that number climbed to 3.7 million.”