North Carolina

There’s a news service story out reporting on a recent test of the changeover to digital broadcast television scheduled for next February.   Broadcasters in Wilmington, North Carolina volunteered to be guinea pigs by accelerating the transition to a couple of weeks ago.  The story concerns what happened:

Of the 1,828 people who complained to the Federal Communications Commission in the first five days, slightly more than half of them were unable to tune in one or more channels.[…]

The largest number of calls to the FCC were from viewers of the NBC affiliate, WECT-TV. That station’s analog broadcast covers far more ground than its digital signal, meaning some viewers could watch that channel before the switchover but not afterward. A total of 553 complaints were attributed to that issue.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said a smaller digital footprint may affect as many as 15 percent of television markets in the U.S.

Nielsen Co. said as of July that there are about 13.4 million television households in the U.S. that receive their programming over the air only, about 12 percent of all homes with TVs. In Wilmington, the total is 15,110, or 8.4 percent.[…]

If the Wilmington complaint rate were applied nationally, there would be more than 1.1 million calls to the FCC in the first five days after the change.

I don’t know about you, but even with the small amount of television I watch, I feel like I’ve been deluged with dire warnings about February’s transition.  At some point, don’t you have to just take the training wheels off the bicycle?

As I write this, it’s clear that Obama picked up a decisive victory in North Carolina, and Indiana is still officially “too close to call”, with votes from Lake County (Gary) Indiana starting to trickle in.

If I’m not mistaken, Clinton’s “victory” speech in Indiana sounded an awful lot like a concession speech, and MSNBC is reporting as I type that Clinton has canceled her morning show appearances tomorrow (Wednesday).

Hmmmm…..maybe the Dems won’t go all the way to Denver to decide a nominee.

Seen in the Winston-Salem Journal, an editorial complaining about average folks subsidizing others’ auto insurance:

About one in every four North Carolinians is covered through the massive N.C. Reinsurance Facility for risky drivers. That risk pool is larger than any similar mechanism anywhere else in America.

The facility regularly loses money, and state law allows the participating auto-insurance companies to recover the facility’s losses from all insurance clients, not just those who are risky drivers.[...]

At the end of the year, when the facility’s books are closed, the losses almost always come from the drivers who were in the pool because of these plea-bargain, non-point convictions, the insurance companies say. And, in many years, the recovery cost for those losses has meant an increase in insurance rates for all drivers of as much as 10 percent.

In effect, therefore, safe drivers are paying for the added risk and losses incurred by drivers who used the system to get their charges reduced. These drivers also benefit from considerably lower rates than do those risky drivers who do not get the benefit of a reduced charge. That hardly seems fair, either.

I couldn’t agree more, although I question whether the problem is really “leaks” in MVR’s and traffic court practices, rather than other restrictions (regulatory or not) that limit insurers’ ability to classify customers and explicitly increase/decrease rates based on those classifications.

Of course, it should be noted that many of those folks in the reinsurance facility are unlikely to be willing to purchase coverage (or purchase adequate coverage) if they are asked to bear the full brunt of their unsubsidized rate. In which case, most drivers will still end up subsidizing the risk via their uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage.

Still, it’s nice to see a newspaper op-ed agreeing with the notion that subsidies are bad in ratemaking.

Seen in the News Observer:

Durham, with just 59 days left in its main water supply, could be on the front lines of this worst-case scenario.

Up to now, the prospect has been too far-fetched to entertain in detail, which is why there are few specifics in Durham ordinances about what would happen if the drought doesn’t let up. Raleigh also lacks a set plan for an end-times-type drought.[...]

Stage VI water restrictions lie down the road if things get desperate. The few specifics in the ordinance include using untreated water to put out fires when possible and banning any industrial water uses. All residents will be told to use disposable plates and utensils. Duke University, Durham County’s largest water user, already has taken this step in its dining halls, trading china for throwaway plates.

The Stage VI ordinance ends on a vague note. “All other uses of water will be limited to those necessary to meet minimum health and safety needs of the customers as determined by the city manager,” it says.

Let’s see. It’s been two years since New Orleans was nearly wiped off the map—an event aggravated by a lack of a disaster plan. You’d think that we would have learned by now that it pays to consider what sorts of bad things can happen to a community or a region, and plan in advance for what sorts of things might be done if the unthinkable occurs.