Digital Television, Convergence, and the Public: Another Digital Divide?

Abstract

While 85 percent of Americans pay to receive television signals through satellite or cable companies, 15 percent still receive their television using over-the-air signals. With the elminination of analog television signals, the 15 percent of households have had to make significant changes in their viewing technology. These households tend to be elderly, poor, minority and rural. Signal coverage areas will be cut back, since government assumed a viewer would have an antenna on a 30 foot pole. Few do, and governmental programs delibertely hid this engineering fact. It is argued that digitalism has neglected the public use of the airways and created yet one more digital divide.

Keywords

• digital divide
• digital television
• over-the-air television
• television