said by knightmb:said by tschmidt:said by RadioDoc:That they never fully funded the original number of coupons?
I think there are three weaknesses in the transition program.
1) They funded 35 million coupons split between ones anyone can get and ones to qualify you had to state OTA was your only means of getting TV.
I don't have a quarrel with size of the original Coupon Program. What should have happened is funding limit increased as soon as they found out more coupons then expected had been requested. When all is said an done it is likely no more then 35 million coupons will be redeemed. Lots of people who did not need them requested and got coupons.
2) The transition should not have originally been scheduled in winter. February is not a good time to be up on your roof in snow country. Having said that I was against changing the date to June 12 so close to the Feb 17th.
3) The
Longley–Rice modeling probabilities used to set coverage area were not realistic and is the crux of the problem people are having not being able to receive DTV programs. More realistic probabilities would have forced stations to use higher antenna or more powerful transmitter.
/tom
I'm glad I'm not the only one that likes to look at the logical side of this instead of the "only (insert whoever you don't like) is too stupid to be ready to switch" excuse I often see. Granted, some people are lazy, there is no denying, but now that some of the stations have switched, the complaints are rolling in about the problems of not being able to receive anything when one could get many stations, even if a little snowy, before. I've seen it first hand, I'm lucky though that I live near a major city, so reception isn't really an issue, but a 15 minute drive down the road and reception is gone. DTV is NOT very friendly to anything other than "flat" terrain I'm discovering. There is no need for any "I told you so" either, because this hurts everyone. I'm glad that some areas get perfect reception and sadden that others didn't have a well planned out execution of the DTV plan. That probably explains why a lot of the major networks here are hanging on to Analog a little longer, guess they didn't want to be the guinea pigs for this one.
The FCC is going to give stations permission to use more power if needed. First the whole transition has to get going and we need to see were we are at. 
