The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications & the Internet is holding a DTV status hearing Sept. 16, Broadcasting & Cable reports. The hearing is about a group of TV stations along the U.S.-Mexico border that oppose a bill allowing them to continue broadcasting in analog after the Feb. 17 digital transition. One of the bill’s backers, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, believes Spanish-speaking populations on both sides of the border will lose access to emergency information, hence her support of a five-year extension of the date to switch to digital. These households along the border are heavily analog-only. TV stations argue that continuing to broadcast in both analog and digital would be unnecessary and costly.
—Christopher Perez