Digital Tear

DTV 2009. The next step in our televisionary evolution that has shaped our country for over 50 years. Analog to digital. It makes sense. Things have been improving all around the TV for years, yet nothing has been done as of yet to improve analog signal. You can have the most bad-ass widescreen-flatscreen-high-definition television on the market. But without cable, it's almost not worth it.

So thank you, Government, for upgrading our TV signal. Thanks for providing yet another reason to stay at home and watch more channels in all their digital beauty. Thanks for giving us our tax money back in a form we can appreciate and understand better. What would we do without digital, people? What is Zimbabwe doing without digital? What about Darfur? Iran? Sichuan? Myanmar? Those people are idiots and they're losers because they're missing out on an incredible picture. Tsk tsk. We are a lucky country because our government rewards us with a $40 coupon to upgrade our analog signal. In fact, they'll even provide you with 2 $40 coupons if you ask. But act now because supplies are limited. There are only 22.25 million coupons available to every one. After that, there will be an additional 11.25 million coupons available solely to dedicated analog receiving homes*.

Okay, seriously. What the hell? I have been trying to figure out why our Government has spent the money (1.4 billion dollars) and the time advertising, designing and supporting this DTV 2009 campaign for months. And thanks to Seth Godin's book "Meatball Sundae", I think I may have my best theory yet on why our country is doing this.

Now take a deep breath and think this out with me.

In Godin's book, he takes a hundred and fifty-odd pages to explain why mixing old marketing techniques and new marketing techniques doesn't work. An old marketing technique would be advertising on NBC prime-time or running a Super Bowl ad. A new marketing technique would be AdWords on Google searches, which pull up advertisements based on the search terms you enter, or even Godin's own site, Squidoo.

Now with this in mind, I've been thinking about how television is on the out. Crazy, I know, but give it a minute. How many plays does YouTube get per day? YouTube generates permission-based views, meaning people travel to YouTube to watch videos, even if they're commercials or non-entertainment based media, like Barack Obama speaking to his campaign staff in Chicago, which as of 8:55 has 201,060 plays and was added June 7th- 2 days ago. Television's main revenue are the 3-5 minutes between your favorite cliff hangers which are annoying and meant to interrupt shows. TV writers cater to this and have since "and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors".

So how does DTV 2009 come in? Well, my guess is that our Government seeks more control over us by means of communication, in this case, a "better picture" of who's watching and what (although I'm not so sure if they can monitor what we watch via digital signals). China saw the effect TV had over the masses of our country and soon put a TV in every house in the country*. Why? So the Government could be present in every home in the nation. But this goes further than the Government. This is the doing of every major marketer out there. It's a fight against the internet and its reign of power. Television wants to make a comeback and it comes with a $40 coupon. Now we get more channels with a better picture. And let me say, those commercials are looking good these days.