After several false starts and postponements, the FCC has officially switched over from analog to digital broadcast for the nation’s televisions. I think I’m pretty smart, and I know Daughter is, but we still engaged in the following dunderhead conversation several months ago.
DTR: I got my converter box with that coupon the government offered so I’m good to go when they make the change.
OSV: Wait a minute. Don’t you have cable in your building?
DTR: The building has cable. I don’t have cable.
OSV: But I’ve watched your TV. You have great reception. Nobody in Manhattan gets good reception unless they have cable.
DTR: That may be, but my reception is off the roof antenna.
OSV: So that means you’re analog? You get TNT. That’s a cable station. Wouldn’t that make you digital? Your set is like 2 years old. Aren’t analog TVs the really old ones, the ones with the rabbit ears?
DTR: Rabbit ears? I’m waiting until June 12th to see what happens when I turn on the TV. Then I’ll set up the converter box if I have to. There’s just no other way to tell.
There hasn’t been this much confusion in the streets since Orson Welles commandeered a radio frequency and read The War of the Worlds while people jumped out their windows. My elderly uncle is in a nursing home up in Westchester, and I’ve been getting mail from them asking if I want to order him cable for a monthly fee or buy my own converter box and have them connect it. Most of his television viewing is done in the library with the big TV, but he has a 13″ in his room to watch the news at night, etc. So yesterday being the 12th of June, I drove up there to check things out.
I walked into his room and saw they had installed a Cablevision box on top of his little TV. I took a stroll down the hall and noticed all the private sets had cable boxes. Maybe the nursing home was feeling generous. Uh-huh. I also noticed everyone now had the standard Cablevision remote. I knew right away this was trouble. The first thing you do for an elderly relative in a nursing home is buy them one of those giant remotes with the three enormous buttons: POWER, CHANNEL, VOLUME. Any additional button is only a distraction to be accidentally pushed over and over without purpose. The Cablevision remote has about 50. Little. Buttons.
A half hour later, after my basic tutorial failed to train my uncle in which controls to ignore, I whipped out the black Sharpie pen that I always bring with me to the nursing home because something invariably needs to be marked. I drew the giant P, C, and V he’s come to know and love around the corresponding controls and told him to ignore the others at his own peril.
OSV: By the way, Uncle, did you sign something when they came and installed that cable box?
UNCLE: Sign what?
OSV: Your name. On anything to do with the TV.
UNCLE: Not that I know of.
It now being the 13th, Daughter must have already turned on her TV. I figure that soon I’ll be getting her analog call, and the nursing home’s digital bill. The powers that be have spoken.
The Gritty City unfolds in Daughter’s Featured Fotos
nightcall
i love a parade
bushwick
sunset over 6th ave