It’s a new year and as of the first of the year every Sally-Shopper and Johnny-Bag-O-Donuts is eligible for their two free coupons good for $40 towards the purchase of a set-top DTV converter box. Too bad it’s $30 short of the retail price of the box when it becomes available in mid February…
Although this program really had elderly and rural Americans in mind, I’ve read comments in blog postings by tech-savvy individuals that now of the program and are jumping on it early before the coupons dry up reasoning that since they have a couple other TVs in the house that aren’t on cable they ‘deserve’ them. Well, to be fair the details of the program are for TVs like that, but the spirit of the program it for the clueless and/or financially disadvantaged. In my opinion, if someone has the financial worthiness and time to log in to a tech blog and comment about how they deserve one or two of these coupons, they are the selfish, uppity assholes this coupon program was not intended for and is the parasitic type of person that undoubtedly needs so many TVs in their mother’s basement because no one wants to be around them and the television is their only friend.
Since the program only lasts until March 31st, 2009 or when all of the coupons are taken – probably by the parasites I was talking about earlier – don’t expect this to last long.
Neilsen is throwing out an estimate that about 13% (14.3 million of the 112.8 million) of the viewing households rely on OTA broadcasts. That seems a bit generous to me, however, as most Americans are completely ignorant of what this program is about and only slightly more aware that digital TV is “available”, only those in the ‘know’ and those that know who make an effort to tell those that need it, I expect to see that most of the needy people will wind up S.O.L.
Broadcast stations need to run psuedo-stories like this every. fucking. day. until it sinks into the thick craniums of the average TV zombie:
On a slightly more cheery note, I (uncharacteristically) happened to be watching some mindless, boob-tube blather and saw a PSA for the coupon program trying to explain everything in 30 seconds. Who knows, maybe someone saw it and got their coupons. Too bad I was watching a cable channel ( <- Think about that for a minute).
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