TV Transition follies: Plaguing consumers then and now.

Looks like the “digital television transition” to abandon analog and make high-definition broadcasts the standard is not going to happen as planned, but is quite likely to be delayed until June. We never favored government forcing a technology on the public and industry in the first place; But it struck us as at least a little bizarre to, years into the making and planning, to pull the rug out from those who’d teed up for the changeover, from broadcasters to equipment makers, to you and me.

It’s probably not a huge deal, but I felt like making a snarky comment, imagining what it’d have been like if such shenanigans and government interference had gone on when television, primarily back in the 50s, was just about to appear on a massive scale in living rooms. of America’s families.

1st TV transition, circa 1956: “We were going to start giving y’all these really cool radios with pictures on ’em, now we’re not.”

Well, of course it turns out that TV technology, if not in a practical form, had been around for decades already by ’56, had gone thru FCC licensing hoopla, and worse, production on TVs suspended for years during the second World War. So technology really was delayed back then too. Maybe we’re a little luckier than I thought since, regardless, the digital era is here. You can surf over to Netflix and watch a documentary on Philo Farnsworth and the entire era for some perspective on our boundless capacity for screwing things up and making them harder than they need to be. You can even stream it over that high def TV.