Doc Searls responds to my answer to his earlier post, with stuff that I agree with, but think doesn't matter a lot:

Even for old analog-only TVs, there are plenty of workarounds, including plain old cable TV. A very small minority of viewers today get their TV from antennas. And if that's how Scoble's dad gets his analog TV, all he'll have to do is get a converter that turns his digital TV to analog. There will be plenty of those around by February 2009.

That's all true - it's not that hard to get that stuff done, and it's pretty cheap. The problem is, I don't think that matters a lot. This looks to me a lot like a classic "perception vs. reality" issue. Go talk to a few 50+ non-technical folks, and see how they consume TV. Never mind the fact that most of them get cable, and thus won't be affected by this changeover at all. All that has to happen is for a few people to decide to scare-monger on this - i.e. - "they are trying to take your TV away!" - and this simple problem will start to look absurdly complicated. It shouldn't be that way, and it doesn't need to be that way - but I won't be at all surprised if it goes that way.

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