I am no apologist for Congress, CEA, the manufacturers, or broadcasters, but I have been around long enough to know that this issue is very complex and not very well understood.

The entire reason you have HDTV today is because Eddie Fritts, CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters sold Congress on the idea that free television is essential to our democracy. Free broadcasting provides entirely free signals to anyone who can receive them, be that in their home or in some group home, or whatever the scene is. The point is that an informed electorate is essential to democracy and Eddie convinced the FCC and Congress in 1987 that free TV was threatened until it could compete in the HDTV arena that was just starting to show itself. HDTV was much better fit to cable and DBS (when it would come), and, if wildly popular, could walk away with the power that free TV has to buy original programming and to run a free news service which has accountability (public airwaves-public service) to the govenrment, which the cable news does not.


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