Powell Presses On

摘要

Despite a rebuke by a Senate committee last week, FCC Chairman Michael Powell is pushing ahead with a plan to force TV stations to return their old analog channels years sooner than they expected. The Senate Commerce Committee last week voted to require only a small portion of the country's 1,300 TV stations to return old channels early. But Powell insists the transition to digital television will take decades unless an aggressive timetable is set for every broadcaster. What matters most, he says, is that the returned channels are for police and fire departments, many of which desperately need the fre-quencies to revamp patchwork communications.