The first crisis for the Obama administration may not take place in Wall Street or Detroit but in peoples’ living rooms across the country. According to law, on February 17 the plug will be pulled on traditional analog broadcasting in the US. Digital signals will then be the only way to receive TV over the air. This transition will be inevitably messy. How the Obama Administration will deal with it is an early indicator on how it approaches problems. So far, it has asked Congress to postpone the transition by a few months. This is quite sensible but misses an early occasion for public leadership. It treats this technological change as an administrative problem instead of a great opportunity to inspire a shared effort in national innovation. But it is not too late to take that course. What is the problem? Older analog TVs that receive their pictures from over-the-air broadcast signals rather than from cable of satellite will soon go dark... [read more]