Stalled Switch to Digital TV A Classic Tale of Breakdown

The nation's switch to all-digital broadcasts has been more than a decade in the making. The federal government has spent nearly $2 billion to help people prepare. Broadcasters spent another $1.2 billion to run warning ads and millions more to upgrade equipment. Until last week, the United States seemed ready to follow the half-dozen European countries that have made the switch. But with two federal agencies in charge, no clear idea of how many people would be affected and constant partisan disagreements over money, the program foundered just before its long-standing Feb. 17 deadline. It has now been pushed back four months. The result is confusion for the millions of Americans for whom the television is not simply another electronic device in the home but a crucial source of news and information. The idea that the government might deprive people of television reception strikes some as unjust and, in the event of emergencies, possibly dangerous. Exactly how that happened is in many ways a classic Washington story.

The digital-transition bill was born amid sniping between Republicans and Democrats, which time and again complicated its implementation. The heads of the two federal agencies charged with managing the transition barely spoke to each other. And in the end, the rifts between Republicans in the Bush administration running the program and the congressional Democrats overseeing it stymied efforts to right the transition as it steered off course.