Impending DOOM!!! Or Not

Many of you are already aware of the fact that in the United States television broadcasts are going all digital in February of 2009 (February 17 to be exact). Yet, this Friday (July 19th) a full 6 months before the transition is going to take place a local Portland, OR TV station is going to "'pull the plug' to help viewers find out if their TV is ready for the conversion to Digital TV." Found here or by clicking on the title of this blog you can find out what KGW Channel 8 in Portland is planning on doing. My question for KGW is simple, what do they hope to prove by running this so called "test"?

Let me explain why I ask that question. I'm not ready for the digital switch, why those of you who know me might ask, it's strictly a money thing. I'm waiting as long as a can to buy a new TV so I can enjoy digital in all its High Definition glory. Sure I know I can request a rebate from the federal government to buy a analog to digital signal converter but why do that when I can have a new tuner built into my new TV. I would imagine that there are a few million other Americans who are thinking along the same wavelength as me. KGW's idea of turning off an analog transmitter to tell me something I already know is completely dumb. While it's only a 10 second test, let me give you a possible scenario of what could happen.
The news starts as normal. The reporter in the field gets ready to do is DTV report. The reporter turns off the analog transmitter on cue. 10 seconds later he trys to turn it back on. Nothing happens, he re-flips the switch, still nothing. Now he's wasting his time and my time in trying to prove that we need to get ready for the switch. Why should I have to watch 10 seconds of static so some TV station can prove something I already know.

I'll be ready for the switch to digital/HD TV in February of 2009, NOT July of 2008. Get a clue KGW, you're just going to wind up offending and/or panicking a large portion of your viewing audience.

By the way if you want to know more about the switch to digital here are some links you can check out:
DTVanswers.com

TV Converter Box Coupon Program

Wikipedia's DTV page.

You can also shoot me an email sharpeonair at yahoo dot com (obviously put that into email format at = @ dot = .). Thank you for reading!