RIP Rabbit Ears

Last evening as I slept, the great and much anticipated (well not really) switch to digital TV took place. As off today- the Rabbit Ears are dead - metaphorically.

A while back - TV gurus (FCC) decided February 17, 2009 was a date for the digital conversion. We were informed as a nation of TV junkies would be so much better off having digital signals for our entertainment-in-a- box viewing. However, with the new administration, came a new deadline - June. (I am not even going there.)

Hats off to those stations who switched when they were originally mandated (forced) to switch. It is similar to being given a deadline for something and then having the deadline switched because there are whiners in the group that didn't get their work done. Instead of penalizing the whiners the rest of us suffer. Undoubtedly that is an over-simplification but I believe most of us can relate.

It has a little bit to do with the whole "converter box" issue too, probably.

I was only a user of the Rabbit Ears in college. In the stone age (1980's) back in good old Chadrock, America, the only cable TV in the dorms was in the commons area downstairs. I think they may have been putting them in the rooms a bit at a time and you could sign up with the cable company but the stone tablet I kept that information on was broken years ago. Today, my kids have cable as a standard feature of there dorm room.

At any rate - the analog signal I was able to pick up being on the southern face of the dorms was minimal. However during the day I could usually pick up one station. I do remember being able to watch David Letterman's morning show that was on between my classes. ( I had been a Letterman fan since then up until he got too big for his breeches this past fall during the election time. Now granted, maybe the Dave's humor didn't switch but my tolerance for mean did. I suppose I expect entertainment and some political jokes but when such a big deal was made of Sen. McCain cancelling an appearance to go DO HIS JOB, I had enough. I channel surf right past Late Show now.)

Granted I may have been subjected to the analog signal when I was little but I can't remember it. I grew up with Denver TV on cable. They had the CBS, NBC, and ABC stations plus we had KWGN - which had Blinky the Clown and All-Star wrestling. We also had PBS. I remember Masterpiece Theater and Alistair Cooke on Sunday nights. There weren't a lot of channels but living in town, we could get cable.

The Wyoming stations weren't on cable at the time that I can remember. We did watch KTWO out of Casper if the cable went out which didn't happen a lot -usually just during really, really bad snow storms. For you TV trivia buffs, Pete Williams on NBC - national - worked as an anchor on KTWO a bazillion years ago. We could pick up KDUH from Scottsbluff once in a while.

When satellite TV came in - the BIG outer space sized dishes where the IN thing to have because TV was supposedly so much better and you could get so many more choices. (Seriously, you can only watch one channel at time.) I have seen several of those dishes turned into yard art over the years.

At any rate, I have lived through the Age of Analog - grateful it was there and appreciative really of those folks that figure that stuff out. Now I am on to living in the Digital Dimension.

Wow... I really need a life... LOL