A Change Is Gonna Come

Have you gone out and purchased your digital converter box yet? Maybe you have cable TV, or a satellite dish, and you have already stopped panicking about the big changeover to digital TV. Perhaps you have been blissfully unaware of this switch and have yet to worry about how you will watch "The View" after February 17. If that's the case, you will be pleased to discover that the United States Senate has just provided you with four more months to panic.
The deadline is now June 12, and you will be encouraged to get your coupon and get in line to buy your magic box. The magic box takes the digital signal from broadcast stations and turns it into pretty digital pictures on your old TV set. Really. The TV my parents bought for me when I moved into my first apartment was the one that my wife insisted that we keep so that she could put it on top of the refrigerator to watch "Oprah" in the afternoons while she puttered about the kitchen. For many moons this was a machine that made a little noise and had a fuzzy picture, but it kept me from having to figure out how to string a cable through the basement or attic because she could get one or two fuzzy stations on it.
That was before we had the magic box. Now we get channels that we never knew existed. We get a half dozen different versions of PBS, and a wide variety of programs in Spanish, Korean, and languages we have yet to decipher. We even get a channel that shows a live feed from the traffic cameras placed at the end of our many area bridges. All of this comes out of a television that was purchased just before MTV went on the air for the very first time.
My first impulse was to rush right out and buy three more magic boxes for our "real TVs." Why pay for cable when there is all this great video tumbling out of the air? I could live without all those movie channels, and the on-demand video feature, Couldn't I? I could watch the traffic stack up at the toll plaza instead, right? I could watch the U.S. Senate debate weighty matters like this and others on C-Span. Well, at least I have four more months to fret about it.