The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee yesterday approved a deadline of April 7, 2009, for television stations to broadcast only digital signals.
The legislation would require television stations to end their analog broadcasts and return those airwaves to the government, so some of them can be sold for commercial wireless services, a sale expected to bring in $10 billion or more.
The measure also sets aside $3 billion to subsidize some of the costs of Americans buying devices that would convert digital signals so that existing analog television sets could still work.
