Hard-date Makes Pols Equivocate

Three important revelations came out of Wednesday's House subcommittee hearing on the DTV transition: estimating spectrum auction proceeds is a waste of time, the United States of America is not Berlin, and grandmas have clout on Capitol Hill. ¶ Just how much money the remaining chunk of Channels 52-69 will generate is anyone's guess, but empirical calculations and wild estimations put it somewhere between $680 million and $50 billion. The low end comes from the sale of licenses in Channels 54, 55 and 59, auctioned off in mid-2002 for $145,467,590. At those prices, the remaining analog TV spectrum in 52-69 would bring in around $680 million. While such a straight-forward calculation doesn't account for certain geographic, economic and political factors, (like a hard date for the eviction of broadcasters), the government's own estimate has fluctuated from $27 billion to $70 billion and recently settled at around $50 billion. ... TVTechnology link