DTV Transition could still be delayed

Check out the Press Release Below. In a nutshell, it says that the House would have passed the DTV Delay Bill but the Bill didn't have the necessary two-thirds votes. So the delay could be coming because the Bill has been re-introduced in the Senate (where it passed before, and has passed again), and could be voted on this week in the House. Stay tuned.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_________________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release January 30, 2009

PRESS BRIEFING

BY

PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

1:55 P.M. EST

MR. GIBBS:…

And then lastly, let me go through just quickly the DTV question from yesterday, which as I said, I should have been better prepared for.

I think you all have copies of letters that were sent from the transition to both Houses of Congress in January. The transition, obviously, in an agency -- in the agency review process determined what it believed to be shortfalls in planning for the DTV transition. For instance, it found that the coupon program for converters had 3.3 million requests sitting on a waiting list, and that the FCC told Congress that the call center that it had established could not handle the rate of incoming calls.

The transition asked that Congress delay the February 17th transition. The House -- I'm sorry, the Senate voted on that last week and passed that delay. The Senate took -- I mean, sorry, I'm confused today -- the Senate voted on that, the House took the bill up under a suspension of the rules requiring two-thirds of those present supporting the bill. The bill passed with an overwhelming majority, but not with the necessary two-thirds. The Senate last night took the bill up again and passed it. I'm told that the House will vote next week. We anticipate that the House will pass a delay on DTV to June 12th. If that gets to the President's desk, and when that happens, the President will sign that delay into law so that we might undergo a little bit better planning process to ensure no interruption for people with televisions.