Digital TV in fits and starts in the USA

The UK government has been incredibly good in communicating to their citizens that good old analog TV is going away.

What do we get here in Uncle-Scam land? Only within the last year did we finally mandate that new TV's have to have a digital tuner. There's a "coupon" program that you can supposedly use to get a converter box to receive over the air digital TV. You just have to be one of the 18% of households who don't get cable/satellite or have a TV set with rabbit ears out in the garage.

The problem? The converter boxes aren't really in stores yet. People don't know how to get the coupons. People who don't need coupons because they're part of that 82+% who pay for a TV service - will mistakenly sign up and get them anyway.

Perhaps this was what this press release (US citizens, your tax dollars paid for this!!) was about.