The digital switch leaves many in the dark

Boob Tube

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By Emley Kerry

Dear Readers,

I have a confession to make. As the rest of the world transitioned into the digital age, I, the writer of a column about television, let one of my televisions become a dinosaur, an analog relic to be studied by future generations.

The federal government made several attempts at switching to digital TV but had to postpone the date because people were not ready or did not understand the scheduled change. During this time, most stations broadcasted in both digital and analog.

I am one of the guilty few who waited till it was too late. Now the only channels my rabbit-eared TV picks up are the few stragglers that still broadcast in analog. On its analog frequency, the Fox channel plays an "if you can see this, you haven't switched to digital TV" video over and over that explains in English and Spanish what digital TV is, how to get it, and how to hook up a converter box.

Trinity Broadcasting Network, or what I affectionately call "the Jesus Channel," still appears below a faint white snow on my TV screen. God now apparently speaks in analog and digital, not at all strange since Christianity tends to have one foot in the past and one in the present. This analog dinosaur probably won't be around for much longer, as many stations are turning off the switch to analog as they flip on the digital one (although "dinosaur" would be an inappropriate moniker for TBN).

Analog TV will soon become a quaint memory, an anecdote, a synecdoche for what will be perceived as better days of morality and family unity. The noise of analog programming will be replaced with static, which will fade away to silence as people transition to digital TV, thus rendering static a memory in the minds of older generations, and a noise heard only on a badly-tuned radio for future generations.

With digital TV, the image is either there, or it is not - no static, no snow. The next generation of teenagers will have no formative memories of watching bad-quality porn between the fuzzy, dancing black-and-white lines of analog TV.

Television static, the black and white snow and monotone shush noise, used to be a sign of progress and modernity, as that chicken finally made its way into every pot, that car into every garage and a TV planted firmly in the living room of every house across the United States in the 1950s. Static is now the noise of obsolescence, that archaic remnant of the analog age.

The word "static" in the sense of unchanging and "static" as television white noise become synonymous for those who have not switched from digital to analog TV. If you have not converted to digital, the time is now. I hope everyone had a smooth transition, and welcome to the modern, static-free digital age!

Originally Published: Issue 806 - July 1, 2009

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