The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is the agency of the government that gets credit for the three laziest broadcast tools ever: the bleep, the blur and the little black box. Now they are trying to make sure that their creative laziness is put to good use by passing a mandate forcing all live broadcasts to be digital. “What’s the big deal with that??” you may ask. Well I’ll tell you; see long ago on Sept. 17, 1787 a bunch of guys who wanted them some freedom signed this big old piece of paper. When they did they made the sorry little east coast (the 13 colonies) a country with thirteen states. Now see when they did this they also added some amendments to that piece of paper, and the very first one says that we have a freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech, however, DOES NOT, I repeat, DOES NOT protect any racist, vulgar, or profane language. With that said, I have to say that the FCC has in no way infringed on the rights of the American citizen. I mean all they are trying to do is to keep small children from learning how to curse better than their parents at age five. This I can agree with. The FCC has been accused of infringing on the rights of the American people almost every time that they release a big mandate like this; but in reality it’s really some stupid person’s fault. For example this new mandate about all live broadcasts having to go digital is because of a few mistakes. As listed below.

1. The pirating of TV shows
2. The whole thing with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl.
3. The people who follow the news camera crew around cities just so they can “flip the bird” to all of the viewers in the broadcast area.

Now, looking at those with a legal, right-minded eye you can see that there is decent reason for this mandate.

So this whole issue is a burning one, fierce and debated (at least in the world I see), and there is a lot of personal emotions that are slug here. I’ve digressed again though. So now back to how a broadcaster would switch over to digital.

A broadcaster’s switch to digital broadcasting can be done two ways (as far as I know). The first is if the station keeps the old equipment and just runs the final feed through a mixer board that converts it over to digital. This I see as the least effective, with more delay and decreased quality. The second, and best in my view, is to start the signal as digital and have it stay that way all the way through.

I, personally, have never had first hand experience with the first option (if you have, feel free to enlighten me). Since I have had no first hand experience with that method I won’t try to explain it. The second however I’ve had a lot of experience with, including wiring two systems like it. From my experience with this kind of system I can really say that it flows very smoothly. There is, of course, a delay with any kind of digital system; the key is to get it down to as small as possible. With the FCC mandate however there is a minimum delay time (to allow censoring of the program), with the minimum delay time news will never be the same as it has been up to now.

The FCC’s mandate of a minimum delay time has gone against basically everything that broadcast media has worked toward since it began. Ever since the start of broadcasting the goal has been instantaneous news. The dream of every broadcaster is to be the first to get every story, because of this broadcast systems have progressively evolved to be faster than the previous system. This mandate however is slowing everything down, even if it’s just for a few seconds; that’s just as annoying as un-synced audio track to a movie.

I’ll conclude with a quick recap.

1. The mandate is not violating the first amendment
2. The mandate was passed to keep small children’s minds clean.
3. Digital broadcasting is the way of the future
4. Live television will no longer exist after digital takes over

With all that in mind remember that the FCC is only trying to keep kids heads clean. Also I would like to add that the Super Bowl incident was not Justin Timberlake’s Fault, only Janet Jackson’s.