 Michael Powel appeared on ABC's "Monday Night Football" telecast Monday, Oct. 4, to push DTV to consumers. |
FCC Chairman Michael Powell is taking heat for using taxpayer’s money to promote digital television in a new public campaign called “DTV—Get It.”
The FCC’s new consumer education program features a Web site, www.dtv.gov, that gives shopping and programming tips along with advice for setting up digital television sets at home.
Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization working against the commercial exploitation of children, sent a letter late last week to 160 members of Congress, urging them to withdraw financing for the FCC’s DTV campaign.
According to Powell, the digital transition harkens back to another time when the country was at crossroads: “the transformation from black-and-white to color,’’ he said.
Among those opposing Commercial Alert is former FCC Chairman Nicholas Johnson; Victor Strasburger, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Chief, Division of Adolescent Medicine, University of New Mexico School of Medicine; Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Director, Media Center of the Judge Baker Children’s Center; and Peggy O’Mara, Editor and Publisher, Mothering Magazine.
For more information, visit www.commercialalert.org.
