Today, the Public Interest, Public Airwaves Coalition, of which Common Cause is an active member, is holding a press conference at the National Association of Broadcasters convention.  When I wrote my remarks for the press conference, I had a picture of the convention mood that is far different from what I'm seeing here. Since we're on the cusp of digital TV, a new technology that will make it possible for broadcasters to greatly increase their revenues because they'll be able to broadcast several streams of programming digitally where they could only broadcast one program over the old analog system, I thought all the talk would be about these new money making opportunities. I called it the digital slot machine, and I urged that all this talk about increasing programming that helped your bottom line should not make broadcasters forget their charge to serve the public interest.

But broadcasters aren't jumping up and down with joy at the prospect for the digital transition. Most of the talk is about holding on to their old technology and slowing things down.  They're upset with Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) who would like to hold them to the deadline for giving back their analogue spectrum that they agreed on in 1996. They said they would go digital at the end of 2006. Now, they are complaining that they don't have enough time, that Congress is killing them, that consumers won't know what to do. Of course, the fact that they haven't told consumers much about digital TV or its promise seems to escape them completely. As one of the public interest advocates put it: "In their minds, they're never to blame. They're big powerful dinosaurs. Dinosaurs walked the earth for millions of years."

Here's why you should care about what Congress does on the digital transition. Congress should find a date when broadcasters have to give back their analog spectrum because that spectrum, which belongs to us, the public, is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The government could auction it off, and it would get purchased by people with new technologies -- the cell phone guys, and people doing a whole new generation of communications technologies.