Gutierrez: Don't Extend Converter-Coupon Expiration Date
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has a breakfast metaphor for the DTV-to-analog converter: a box of cereal.
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/27/2008 8:14:00 AM
Former Federal Communications Commission chairman Mark Fowler once famously referred to TV as a toaster. Now Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has a breakfast metaphor for the digital-TV-to-analog converter: a box of cereal.
Gutierrez said the expiration date on the $40 DTV-to-analog converter box coupons Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration is handing out should not be extended beyond 90 days, as some in Congress have asked for, likening it to the coupon on, say, a box of Frosted Flakes.
"I had experience in couponing given my previous background in the cereal business [Kellogg]: 90 days is pretty much the expiration you have on most coupons," he told C-SPAN in an interview for its The Communicators series. "It's long enough to give consumers a chance to think about when they are going to buy and what they are going to buy, but it's short enough to force a decision.”
Gutierrez added that the longer the expiration date, the less redemptions there are and eventually the consumers forget they have them. "A lot of what we are doing here is similar to what you do in a packaged-goods industry.”[The redemption] should not be any longer," he said.
But some high-profile members of Congress have pushed for extending that date, not wanting those who do forget and then can't obtain the subsidy to show up with pitchforks and torches come election time.
Acting NTIA chief Meredith Attwell Baker has said that the NTIA has the authority to permit reapplication.
Gutierrez also said he didn't think the NTIA needs to ask for any more money now on top of the $1.5 billion allocated for the coupon program, adding, "What we need to do is execute."
The NTIA is the Commerce agency overseeing the coupon program, although it has subcontracted the mechanics of that program to IBM.
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When I got my coupons there weren't any converters for sale anywhere I could find. No one had them until six months mafter I received my coupons. Fat lot of good they was then. As far as I'm concerned the government can take their coupons and shove them where the sun doesn't shine. Just like everything else the government get involved in, the screwed it up
Dan
Daniel King - 9/11/2008 12:01:00 PM EDT -
Has he tried to buy a converter box using this coupon? With a mid June expiration date I went hunting for a converter box, preferably with analog pass through. I went to Radio Shack, K-Mart, Best Buy (3 miles from home), and A1-Appliances. None had converter boxes, of any kind, in stock. I was finally able to get a non-pass through box for $59.95 + TAX for a Best Buy located 15 miles away. I was luck to get one of the last two in stock. I also check out online but I was reluctant to purchase from unknown retailers. Where was the supply of boxes? Where were the cheap boxes?
James Ray Bentley - 6/30/2008 4:59:00 PM EDT -
Our local Walmart has not has converter boxes in stock since Mid May (when I got my coupons) and the clerk told me he doesn't expect another shipment till August. That is well after the experation date on my coupon.
I think it's ironic that I can't find a cheap converter box. Walmart is $49.00 ($9.00 minus the coupon) but the only available ones I can find are $69.00 and up.
My how convenient, in other words we'll give you coupons and not make the boxes available to buy in large quanitites
Eric Post - 6/30/2008 9:20:00 AM EDT -
Since Hispanics comprise the ethnic group most dependent upon antenna service, according to recent research, Guiterrez should know better than to equate access to mass media with a box of corn flakes. I think in Spanish they call that "chutzpah."
The Ghost of Cesar Chavez - 6/28/2008 2:14:00 AM EDT
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