CEA's Shapiro Backs Extensions

Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro says the government should give viewers more time to cash in their digital-TV-to-analog converter-box coupons than the two-month window.

The $40 coupons can be applied toward the purchase of the converter boxes. Those converters are necessary to allow viewers with analog-only sets not hooked to cable or satellite to still see full-power TV-station signals after Feb. 17, 2009.

Shapiro said he thought the DTV-education program was going along well and he did not buy the doom-and-gloom scenarios about Feb. 17, 2009.

"The world is not going to shut down and nuclear missiles are not going to go off" if a few people lose TV service for a short amount of time, he said, comparing what he called a "minuscule" number of those with, say, the "2 million people who lost their homes due to foreclosures in 2007."