I see two problems with the logistics of the transition:
1. The converter coupons were made available online -- there've been commercials on for months direction people to dtv2009.gov. But I suspect the correlation between people who still receive television over rabbit ears and people who don't use the Internet is fairly high. There
is a way to request converter coupons by phone (888-388-2009), but the phone number has been much less widely publicized. Accordingly, the people most in need of converter coupons are also the people least likely to be able to request them.
2. I suspect a lot of people chose to wait to see if -- like other consumer electronics -- the price dropped after Christmas. This created a 'bottleneck', where demand for converter boxes rose sharply in the last month. According to
this article, for example, coupon requests in December spiked to over 60% higher than forecast.
Despite these problems, I don't favor extending the deadline. Television isn't a necessity, really, and I'd rather the government focus on other things than to spend more time on this program. I
do favor a plan being discussed to block reuse of the freed-up analog frequencies for one year and to allow broadcasters to continue to transmit emergency information and weather alerts on the old analog frequencies. That way, families who didn't get a converter box in time would still have access to important emergency information for a period of time.