Remember back in the late 90s when we were constantly hearing about how dangerous the Y2K computer bug would be? Many computers recognized the year’s date as only two digits, 1995 would just be 95. The fear was that we’d get to the year 2000 and the computers would all go kerflooie because some might get that it was 2000 and others would think it was 1900. Computers wouldn’t be able to communicate, we wouldn’t be able to communicate, power grids would shut down, there would be plague and pestilence upon the land.
So what happened? Not much. Some countries spent oodles of money getting ready for Y2K and others pretty much let it happen without doing much at all and everybody got the same result. Nothing happened. Zero, Zilch, Zip, Nada. The world kept spinning on its axis and we’ve all pretty much forgotten Y2K and what it was all about. Ever wonder what would have happened if Congress could have pushed back the date change-over?
First off, you know they’d have done it in a heartbeat because the country wasn’t ready and the world wasn’t ready. There was a line of code in somebody’s Commodore PC that hadn’t been rewritten and that could cause the downfall of western civilization. You know they would have cooked up some scheme to delay the start of the year 2000; it’s just a question of how long they would have delayed it. This year we found out.
When the Federal Communications Commission decided to get broadcasters off the schnide and into digital transmission they set it up for February 17, 2009. It was an arbitrary deadline but the commission was tired of the Alphonse and Gaston routine of the TV industry. As February 17th neared there came cries from the wilderness of, “Somebody’s not ready!” So after months of “news” stories and seemingly endless informational announcements on our local TV stations, Congress blinked and pushed the date of the transition back to June 12th.
Some stations, not wanting to pay to transmit signals in both analog and digital – that costs money you know, decided to just go ahead and go digital anyway. You probably didn’t notice that. Other stations just changed the date on their transition to digital promos and kept those suckers running. You probably didn’t notice that either; by now they’re part of the landscape like bad furniture store commercials and file footage of people building the last Pontiac.
A few people have been affected. My mother-in-law, whose little bitty kitchen TV was built by the manufacturer of Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist TV wasn’t able to use a converter box for it. She has to go to work without seeing Matt, Meredith, Ann and Al in the morning. I believe that her heart will go on.
So what do we get with digital, usually high definition, transmission? Mostly it’s lipstick on a pig. It hasn’t made broadcasters provide better programming. We’ve got clear sharp pictures and surround sound of muddy fat people going through a nerf obstacle course. We’ve still got WHDH’s (Boston’s channel 7) news team looking like High School Musical – The Newscast. We’ve still got the “Runaway Bride” saga starring the meandering quarterback Brett Favre every late spring. There’s progress for ya.
One thing is different. They’re finding they have to cut back on the make-up on some of the faces we see. Make-up can do a lot for some people and for some of us even when they put it on with a trowel it would look like a bad patch job on a classic New England stone wall. But with HDTV you can tell when there’s too much. When the anchorwoman blinks and it looks like the garage doors closing… that’s too much… and probably an inappropriate color.
There’s also new opportunity in HDTV. Put all your money in industrial spray tans. HDTV is making people hit the spray tans like never before. Some people are way over-doing it. Take John Boehner, remember it’s pronounced BAY-ner, the House Minority Leader. He was standing next to a new bronze statue of Ronald Reagan at the Capitol the other day and he, Boehner, was more bronze than the statue. That’s too much. You could probably make a pretty good living just supplying him with spray tan.
Here’s a fun thing you can do some time when you’re watching the Sunday talk shows. Watch for a talking head to bring a hand up to his or her face. It can be pretty funny because they almost never bother to spray tan their hands. Just make sure you don’t have a mouthful of coffee when they do it because you’ll realize that they look like Muppets. Well dressed Muppets, but Muppets. It’s hi-tech fun brought to you with digital clarity in high definition so you can laugh at the talking head-igentsia after you’ve gotten so frustrated listening to them that you had to hit the mute button.
Oh, and if you didn’t get your converter box and the TV signals you were accustomed to disappeared on June 12th don’t despair. You can still find out what’s going on via the internet, radio, magazines and, at least for now, newspapers. For entertainment there are still movies, books and music. My guess is you handled this crisis just like you did the Y2K bug. If it hadn’t been for the hype, you wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
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