The Future of Television

In a nutshell, part of the budget reduction plans going through the American government right now involve auctioning off some of the airwaves used by local television stations. According to the website thefutureoftv.org around 1/6^th of Americans get their television through free means (which means the other 250 million or so pay for it (like me – a huge schmuck)). Last time I checked the FCC’s job isn’t to sell the public airwaves to private companies so we can lose our access to them; their job is to lease these signals to various companies so they can provide us with entertainment and information – information necessary for a functioning democracy (or republic if you want to get technical).